Zack tucked his head and covered his smile with a hand.
Rick’s eyes focused on me, and all that heat turned to ice. “I have no intention of paying you anything.”
“You have a VW around here that needs work?” I asked casually, glancing around. The only cars I could see were ours.
He frowned, and the intensity of his gaze picked up. “No.”
“That’s the only thing I charge for,” I told him. “I’m a mechanic by trade. This ghost thing is not my chosen profession. And before you invite me in, you ought to know that the last time someone talked me into checking out a ghost, it turned out to be something a lot more dangerous. The woman who invited me to her house ended up dead.”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “How did she die? Did the ghost kill her? Did you?”
“No. And no. But I couldn’t save her, either,” I told him.
He asked Lisa, “Who sent you to her?”
“Kiri’s husband.”
He took a breath, nodded abruptly, and opened the door to his house. “I suppose you’d better come inside, then.”
A curious thing happened as we entered the house. I shot a quick glance at Zack, who frowned at me and tilted his head. He’d smelled it, too.
Emotions have a scent—more of a feel, I guess, a combination of the sound of breath, heartbeat, and body secretions. Nervous sweat, aroused sweat, and exercise sweat are composed of different substances. They have an intensity, too. Outside on the porch, Rick had been aroused by Lisa and angry at our intrusion—and a variety of other things. He’d been intense. As soon as we came inside the house, everything muted. It might have been some effect of being safely in his own home—the force of emotions quite often is ameliorated by a safe haven. But this was a much stronger drop than I’d ever seen before—and Lisa’s emotions did exactly the same thing. As soon as she stepped across the threshold.
The effect was momentary, like what sound does just before your ears repressurize after an airplane flight or driving down out of the mountains. We followed Rick, and by the time he’d led us across the entrance hall into a room that felt mostly unused, his emotions—and Lisa’s—were normal. If Zack hadn’t noticed it, too, I’d have thought I had imagined it.
The room was . . . empty of smells. No one spent enough time here to leave a mark. Couches placed just so were without the normal scuffs and worn edges that such things acquire in daily living. Rick gestured us forward, but he, himself, stopped at a discreet half bar.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked, opening a sliding cabinet door I could hear even though I couldn’t see it. He pulled four glasses out and set them down.
“Not me,” said Zack.
“No.” Lisa had walked across the room to look out the window at the river.
“No, thank you.” The lack of other scents made some things very interesting. I stepped closer to Rick and took a deep breath. “Are you fae?”
His hand stilled where he had half lifted a bottle of soda water over a glass.
“My grandfather,” he told me. “My mother’s father. He abandoned his wife and my mother. I don’t know exactly what he was. He left me with a bit of intuition about people—and that’s it.” He finished pouring. “I tell you this because you’re married to a werewolf—I may be isolated, but I do read local newspapers. Hauptman is a name that comes up as often as the reporters can figure out how to slide it in. The Tri-Cities’ most famous person, the handsome face of werewolves everywhere.”
I smiled at his sarcasm. “I think he’s pretty, too. Truthfully, his good looks annoy him, though he’s not above using them when he needs to.”
“I will answer your questions, mostly, because my fae-born intuition”—he smiled wryly—“for what it is worth—tells me that you are exactly what you say you are. And that you just might be able to help. I am not in the habit of sharing my family secrets with everyone.” He grimaced. “If you really wanted to know, you could just read any of the true-crime novels written about my wife’s murder, anyway.”
“All right.” I felt bad intruding on his privacy even if it might be for his own good. I met his eyes. “You should know that I’m not fae or werewolf, but I am something. That’s how I knew you were fae—and that’s why I might be able to do something about your ghost. I’m giving you my secret because I stole one from you—and I’ll be asking you for more. You should have at least one of mine in return.”
Rick looked at me, then nodded. He glanced at Zack. “Our introductions were truncated. I’m Rick Albright. Lisa, you’ve obviously met, and I’ve met Ms. Hauptman.”
“Zack Drummond,” Zack introduced himself.
Rick nodded. “All right.” He looked at me. “You’re in charge.”
“Lisa said your wife has been haunting you since her death,” I told him.
He nodded. “I thought ghosts were supposed to be attached to the place they died, or at least someplace important to them. But it doesn’t matter where I am. In airports. Business meetings.” He blanched, drank the soda water in one smooth gulp. “Sometimes she looks alive. I’ll look over, and she’s eating at the table next to me.” He looked away from us and kept talking more and more quietly. As if noise would make the images more real. “Or walking down the road. Sometimes she’s . . . in pieces. Just like when I came in from a night of drinking and found her body cut up in our kitchen. Some of her was in the sink, some of her was . . .” He stopped speaking. “Excuse me,” he said, and walked rapidly out of the room.
Zack and I could hear him vomiting. We waited for him, Lisa visibly torn because she wanted to follow him.
“Sorry,” he apologized as he returned.
“Why don’t you show us around the house,” I said. “Tell me if you see her, and I’ll tell you if—”
And standing behind him was a woman who was almost six feet tall, a stunning redhead with bright blue eyes and a sad mouth. She reached out and ran a hand over his shoulder.
“Well,” I said. “I don’t think that will be necessary. What was your wife’s name?”
“Nicole,” he stared at me, then looked behind him. “You see her? She’s not there.”
“She’s wearing a camisole,” I said. “Blue with embroidered black flowers and a pair of black yoga pants.”