Banish Me

Where We Are

I called Garin like I said I would but he didn’t answer. It went straight through to voicemail so I left a message, telling him to call me back. I had no idea why he ran off last night and I was really hoping it had nothing to do with that Hunter business.

“Cassie! Steven’s here!” my father called through the house.

I jogged to the kitchen where they were all mustered. Gwen, Bren, and Peter were eating.

“He went that way.” Gwen pointed with her fork.

“Just so you know…I didn’t like your drawing.”

She grinned at me and forked another bite into her mouth. I headed outside where a taxi was pulling a uie in the driveway. Steven stood with my father, the dog sitting at his feet. They looked like they were in a heated discussion, probably about last night. That’s what I needed, two grown men going at it like teenagers. Geeze. Sometimes I felt like I was the only adult in my life.

“Hello children,” I said. “How are we?”

Steven turned to look at me and I stumbled. He had several cuts running across the side of his face.

“What…what happened to your face?”

Steven looked at my father, hate just dripping out of his eyes. “Nothing.”

I gripped his chin and turned his face back towards me. They weren’t deep but they weren’t flesh wounds either. I squinted and placed a finger on each one in turn, muttering the spell my mother used so many times to fix me. As I lifted each finger in reverse order, the cuts went away, the only thing left were streaks of red. The fun thing about our line? We could heal wounds on other people. The down side? We couldn’t do it to ourselves.

Steven nodded his thanks and Murphy whined.

“When are you leaving?” I asked, indicating the bag the dog was discreetly hiding.

“I’m not.” He gave me a warm smile. “That’s for your house…well, possible new house. Your father mentioned you said it was haunted.”

Aw crap. I’d forgotten to tell him exactly how haunted it was.

“Yeah…about that…”

My ice ghost appeared next to me, grinning from ear to ear.

“Good morning!” he said brightly.

Steven rolled his eyes. “Tell me again, lass, how did you acquire…him?”

“He came with my new neighbor at school.”

“Ah, right,” Steven sized him up, “we can get rid…”

“No,” both me and the ghost said.

“No,” I said a bit more carefully. “He’s fine. It’s the ghosts at the house that are the problem.”

“How bad is it?” my father finally asked. “I think you distinctly forgot to tell me that part yesterday.”

“Well at least Peter got the realtor to fess up about the wife of the previous owner.”

“Cassie…quit stalling.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. There are five.” The ghost bumped my shoulder. “And then the one in the cellar.”

“What she means to say is the serial killer in the cellar.”

“There’s a what in the where?” Steven said, turning his attention on the ghost.

“A serial killer,” I muttered.