The Complete Coffee and Ghosts

2. Giving Up The Ghosts-8

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.

“s*x 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.