“I love you, too,” I told him, and hung up.
As soon as I was off the phone, Lisa asked, “You don’t know how to exorcise a ghost?”
I shrugged. “I’ve never tried it. Most ghosts are harmless, or nearly so. My brother has more experience with that kind of thing.” Like several hundred years more experience. “I thought it was worth a shot.”
“Maybe he could exorcise Rick’s ghost?”
I shook my head regretfully. “He lives three hundred miles away and his job doesn’t let him travel.” Not to Washington, anyway. Not until they quit looking for him as an escaped prisoner.
“Maybe I should look for someone else with more experience,” she said.
“Okay,” I agreed.
“Okay?”
“I’m not a ghost hunter,” I told her. “You could probably do an Internet search and find a group nearby. If they don’t know how to get rid of a ghost, maybe they’ll know someone who does.”
“Think of the publicity,” murmured Zack. “Ghost hunters investigate famous recluse’s house.”
I stepped on his toe. I feel some obligation to help when people ask me for it—I’m not sure why. But only a little obligation in this case because I didn’t know either of the people involved. If she thought someone else would be better, I wasn’t going to argue with her—especially since she was probably right.
“Do you mind coming out and taking a look?” she said. “I think Rick has probably had enough publicity for a lifetime. If you can’t do anything, maybe we’ll try someone else.”
I looked at my garage. “It doesn’t appear as though I have anything better to do.”
I called Adam to let him know what we were doing, but his phone bumped me to another one.
“Hauptman Security,” said one of Adam’s minions.
“This is Mercy,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “Okay. Okay. I have a message for you if you called. Here it is: ‘Duty calls. Someone broke into a warehouse we have under contract. Cops came but it looks like burglar has a hostage. They need someone familiar with the layout, so I’m headed out. Call you when it’s over. Not dangerous.’”
I waited, but apparently that was it. “Okay,” I said. “Tell Adam I’ve gone ghost hunting. I’m taking Zack, and we’ll be back tonight. Not dangerous.” I hesitated. “Okay. Probably not dangerous, but he knows how these things go with me.”
“Address? Boss will want an address.”
I looked at Lisa. “Where are we going?”
Her lips thinned.
“My husband runs a security firm. They can keep secrets.”
“Your husband the werewolf.”
“That’s the one.”
She gave me the address. I told Adam’s man what it was and we all headed out: Lisa in her Tahoe and Zack and I in my Vanagon.
• • •
Prosser, like the Tri-Cities, is in a region of wine country that started out as orchard country. We took the highway on the north side of the Yakima River instead of the interstate on the south and it weaved along the river’s path through hobby farms and ranches that increased for a minute in density to become the town of Whitstran before thinning out again into countryside.
Zack didn’t talk as we drove. He turned his baseball cap around and covered his eyes. Someone else might have thought he was sleeping, but I could smell his alertness. He was just conserving his strength. I couldn’t tell what he thought about going ghost hunting with me beyond that.
The whole drive between my garage in east Kennewick to Prosser is usually about forty-five minutes on the interstate. The Old Inland Empire Highway was twistier and slower, so we’d been driving about an hour when Lisa turned toward the river.
The road was one of those sneaky dirt roads hidden in the narrow gap between fences. The highway had turned away from the river, and we drove maybe a quarter of a mile when the dirt road dropped and twisted, revealing a hidden Garden of Eden tucked into a flattish fifteen- or twenty-acre parcel between the river and a bench of basalt.
On the side of the road was a tall signpost with a large mailbox beside it. The top and biggest sign said THE HOLLOW. Below it on smaller, hand-painted signs were NO HUNTING, NO TRESPASSING, GO AWAY, and YES, THIS MEANS YOU.
We passed a barn, a smaller stable, then wound around to stop in front of a house that was maybe twice the size of the one I lived in with Adam. Since Adam’s house had been built with the idea that it would serve as a meetinghouse and safe house for Adam’s werewolf pack, our house was huge.
We parked in front of the house and followed Lisa to the door. She gave me a nervous glance.
“I didn’t tell him I was bringing you,” she said.
“A little late to mention it now,” I told her. “Are we going to stand on the porch until he notices us, or are you going to ring the bell?”
She hit the bell, and I could hear it echo—Rick must have had it piped in several places throughout the house. We waited long enough that Lisa was getting nervous before Rick Albright opened the door.
He was not as impressive as I had expected. The werewolves have given me a skewed view on the world. Important werewolves drip authority and (usually) dignity. Dignity, at least, wasn’t apparently important to Richard Albright.
It would have helped if his glasses had not been held together with green duct tape. It would have helped if his shirt hadn’t had a hole in the shoulder—helped more if there weren’t little toy boats sailing across it. But I don’t think I would have liked him as quickly if it hadn’t been for the toy boats. The only person I’d ever had that instant like for was Anna Cornick, the only Omega werewolf I’ve ever met.
However, Rick stepped out on the porch, shut the door behind him, folded his arms, and narrowed his eyes. Despite being the shortest person on the porch, he had enough authority to make Zack drop his gaze and step back.
“Lisa?” Rick’s voice was soft. And hostile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I expected, somehow, for her to drop back to babbling, as she had with me. Instead, she said, with a bit of defiance, “That thing has been following you around for more than a decade. So I made some calls, and they sent me to Mercy Hauptman here.”
He looked at her—and the connection between them was bright and clear to my coyote nose. She might not have told him that she wanted him. And from what she’d told me, he’d never told her he wanted her, either, but I could have cut the sexual tension in that exchange of looks with a knife.