The Stubborn Dead Read online

  The Stubborn Dead

  Natasha Hoar

  Harlequin (2012)

  Rating: ****

  * * *

  Product Description

  Rachel Miller thought her next job was a run-of-the-mill haunting. As a member of the Order of Rescue Mediums it's her duty to release trapped spirits from the earthly realm. But when called to client Sylvia Elkeles's house, she finds a wraith who doesn't act like he should.

  The Order considers the wraith an extreme threat and Rachel may be forced to use a barbaric ritual to free him—a ritual that comes with a heavy personal price. If she fails to humanely release the wraith, she'll have her supernatural abilities bound.

  When Janus Ostara—local supernatural mob boss—shows up demanding her attention, and Sylvia keeps secrets that may place Rachel in mortal danger, she doesn't need her abilities to know something darkly sinister is at play.

  Between uncovering Sylvia's disturbing motives, and avoiding Janus, Rachel has enough on her hands without dealing with a wraith who may not realize he's supposed to be dead...

  20,000 words

  About the Author

  Born in South Africa, Natasha moved to Canada in her 20s and settled just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. This meant she was surrounded by an abundance of amazing natural beauty, interesting people from around the world to talk to and a fair bit of rain (which, oddly enough, she rather enjoys). She's always up for a good adventure, especially if it involves 'stumbling upon' movie or TV shoots, hunting for G1 My Little Ponies at local thrift shops, meandering through book and toy stores, or looking into paranormal phenomena.

  The Stubborn Dead

  By Natasha Hoar

  Rachel Miller thought her next job was a run-of-the-mill haunting. As a member of the Order of Rescue Mediums it’s her duty to release trapped spirits from the earthly realm. But when called to client Sylvia Elkeles’s house, she finds a wraith who doesn’t act like he should.

  The Order considers the wraith an extreme threat and Rachel may be forced to use a barbaric ritual to free him—a ritual that comes with a heavy personal price. If she fails to humanely release the wraith, she’ll have her supernatural abilities bound.

  When Janus Ostara—local supernatural mob boss—shows up demanding her attention, and Sylvia keeps secrets that may place Rachel in mortal danger, she doesn’t need her abilities to know something darkly sinister is at play.

  Between uncovering Sylvia’s disturbing motives, and avoiding Janus, Rachel has enough on her hands without dealing with a wraith who may not realize he’s supposed to be dead…

  20,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  In 2012, we’re committed to bringing you an even wider variety of stories. With our January releases, we celebrate the diversity of the genres Carina Press has to offer. We’re publishing books across a variety of romance and non-romance genres, including mystery, cyberpunk, fantasy, male/male romance, paranormal romance, contemporary romance, science fiction, historical romance and more.

  I hope you’ll try a book in a different genre and spread the word to your friends and family that Carina Press is a destination publisher for quality books across genres.

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

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  Dedication

  For Dad, who encouraged me endlessly, and always ensured a cup of tea and a hug were never far away during the writing of this book.

  I still think you’re the coolest dad around for learning who Sam and Dean Winchester are.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Rachel Miller scowled at the restless spirit. The old cow had done everything short of throwing her out the upstairs window. Now, adding insult to injury, she’d increased the static charge in the room, causing Rachel’s hair to turn into a halo of chocolate-colored cotton candy. Awkwardly sweeping her hair into a poofy ponytail, she felt her patience finally give. “Mrs. Famularo, I’ve asked you six times to leave willingly.”

  Rachel slid the sleeves of her denim jacket back, revealing the blue, tattooed sigil of the Order of Rescue Mediums on her right wrist. She raised her right palm toward the suddenly wide-eyed spirit.

  “I’m done asking.”

  The old woman wasn’t giving up, though. She knew what that sigil meant—every spirit did—yet she hiked her skirts, bared her teeth and came rushing at Rachel with the intent to put her through a wall.

  Rachel felt the rush of power build in her, course through the first of the sigil’s five segments and pour on toward the second. It happened in milliseconds, but it was still too slow. Mrs. Famularo slammed into her like a freight train, her fully manifested arms and torso propelling them out the door, across the corridor and into the wall. Winded from impact, Rachel still found the strength to brace her arms against the old woman’s shoulders, just barely keeping her gnashing, foaming mouth at bay. The spirit began to grind her needle-sharp fingernails into Rachel’s collarbone in an attempt to break her concentration. Instead, though, Rachel swallowed her screams, channeled her pain and anger inward and pushed her abilities even harder.

  Like a cool rush of water across her flesh, she felt the power pour simultaneously into the third and fourth sigil segments. Suddenly the entire hallway was filled with the purest white light imaginable. Before either woman could respond, there was an audible snap.

  The strength ebbed out of Mrs. Famularo’s hands. The old woman’s face took on a perplexed, then terrified expression. Rachel didn’t stop, urging the power into the final portion of the sigil. The light became even brighter, causing Mrs. Famularo to shield her eyes and cry out. Rachel, her eyes barely narrowed to the light, sensed the four invisible presences surrounding them before Mrs. Famularo did.

  Take it easy with her, okay? She doesn’t mean to be like this.

  She never knew if all the presences inside the light heard her mental words, but it didn’t stop her from talking to them. She felt one of the presences—the one she associated with the fifth segment on the sigil—close in and wrap itself around Mrs. Famularo. Mrs. Famularo babbled, frail arms beseeching, reaching for where the walls of her house should have been. The presence curled around her arms, tucked them close to her body and then—

  They were gone.

  Rachel swayed a moment as the pale blue wallpapered corridor came back into view. She put a hand out and touched the indentation her shoulders had left in the wall. She could still sense one of the presences around her. This one in particular—the presence linked to the second segment of the sigil—always lingered.

  “I’m okay. You can go now.”

  Still, it persisted. Some nights, when the extractions were rough, Rachel swore this presence had an almost maternal feel to it. Which was ridiculous, especially since she’d been taught that the presences were not partial to any one rescue medium. “I said I’m fine.” She waved the presence away. “Go take care of Mrs. Famularo. She needs you more than I do.”

  There was a feathery sensation across her cheek, and the presence faded
away. Rachel found hot tears streaking through the dirt on her face, and her heart thumped painfully in her chest. She sucked up a ragged breath, shook her head and limped toward the staircase. Casting a final look at the carnage that had once been an orderly upstairs living area, she wryly understood why some ghost hunters carried shotguns loaded with rock salt while on the job. God only knew she had days when she wondered why she didn’t.

  The smell of cooked strawberries assaulted her as she reached the lower landing. The sound of hushed voices trickled from the kitchen. Rachel headed toward them, carefully stepping over the protective line of salt that crossed the kitchen entrance, and continued around the entire circumference of the floor. Seven women—the shelter’s manager, her daughter and five residents—all gazed at her with a mixture of wonder and trepidation.

  “She’s Home.”

  They released their breaths in a collective rush, putting down bottling implements to hug each other. Rachel smiled, proud that they had tried so hard to do as she’d asked and work at normal tasks, so their fear wouldn’t add to the spirit’s power. She was marveling at the strength of these women when the manager, Sarah, stepped up to her with a small white envelope.

  “This is the first half.” Tears welled up in her eyes, her face full of gratitude. “Once we’ve finished selling the jams, we should have enough for the rest.”

  Rachel closed her eyes a moment, her heart sinking. Her Order declared their work must result in remittance—“in all realms of service, there must be balance.” In other words, just like doctors and other people with regular day jobs, ghost ejectors needed to eat. However, upstairs was a warzone that needed repairing. Downstairs, there were women needing support so they could rebuild their lives.

  She was once again overwhelmed by the smell of the jam. Her stomach rumbled, and her mouth began to water. “If it’s all the same, you can pay me in jars.”

  Sarah blinked, then laughed. “Ladies.” She turned to her gathered brood. “We need a box and seven of the biggest jars we have!”

  Rachel stepped away toward a small side table as the women rushed to their happy work. She could hear the plaintive beep of her iPhone from deep within her cavernous backpack and tried not to sigh as she pulled it out. She winced at the waiting messages. The first she deleted without bothering to listen to it. The second, though, raised gooseflesh along her arms.

  “My name is Sylvia Elkeles. I’ve had eight people—psychics, regular mediums, ghost hunters, priests—try to help me with my problem, but they were all useless. The last chaplain almost died. He gave me your number as they wheeled him into the ambulance. I have a wraith, Ms. Miller. You’re my last hope to get rid of him.”

  Chapter Two

  The cozy character home, with its blue-gray siding, white accents and wraparound porch, should have taken Rachel’s breath away. Instead, it raised every hair on her body.

  She walked around the front of the home slowly, her motorcycle helmet tucked tightly under one arm. A closer look at the building showed irregular patches of peeling or bubbling paint in high, awkward corners. Upper windows had cracks, one a full distress pattern from where something had been thrown against it. Most disturbing, though, was a subtle smoking effect across a small basement windowpane—a shadowy smearing, like a hand drawn wistfully away into the house.

  Rachel followed the direction of the smear with her eyes and noticed a single garage at the end of a tight lane running along the side of the house. Stepping closer to the garage, she instantly felt the aggression and pain seeping from the main house begin to ease. She grabbed the garage door and flipped it up, revealing a cherry-red classic car, its cover rudely angled off to one side. She stepped up to the car and quietly thrilled at the perfection, the obvious care that had once gone into it. She swiped at the dust clustered on the driver’s side window, peering in at the impeccable pearl-colored interior. She almost missed the key sitting in the ignition.

  “It’s a ’57 Eldorado Brougham. It belonged to my grandmother.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Rachel let her gaze linger on the car a moment longer before turning to the other woman. It wasn’t odd for her to come across someone else who moved as quietly as she did. Usually, though, it was another rescue medium or a member of the supernatural community. Sylvia Elkeles was neither.

  Her shoulder-length hair and angled bangs had impeccably placed auburn and blond highlights that complemented a striking makeup job that could have been plucked from the pages of Vogue. Her clothing revealed a preference for shopping in Vancouver’s designer-label boutiques, from the slightly too-large sweater that draped off her perfectly tanned right shoulder, to her fashionably stressed jeans and fabulously bulging limited edition Gucci handbag on her arm. Her sneakers—high-tops that cost a small fortune—showed the most wear. Rachel didn’t miss how she clasped one hand around her slim midriff, the other dangling in feigned relaxation, her Audi car keys jutting between her fingers.

  Rachel put her in her early thirties, tops, even though she had the sharp-eyed expression of a woman with far more life experience. “So this was your grandmother’s house?”

  “My brother’s. He went missing months ago while hiking in the backcountry. He’s presumed dead.”

  “So this is his car, then?”

  “I suppose.” Sylvia’s lips quirked into a tight, angled smile. “Grams left it to him. He only finished restoring it a month before he went missing. Did it all by himself too. Just loved the damn thing.” She shrugged, barely looking at the car. “I’m Sylvia.”

  “I guessed as much from your voice. How is the chaplain?”

  “Who?”

  “The priest who gave you my number. How is he?”

  She shrugged again, her gaze flitting over her shoulder, not to the house, but to the road. “Good, I suppose. The police stopped by to ask what had happened. They didn’t say he’d died.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I have a ghost. The chaplain slipped trying to get rid of it.”

  “Slipped?”

  Her eyes still on the road, Sylvia replied, “He was pushed, Ms. Miller. Pushed down a flight of stairs, then lifted by the throat and shaken like a doll.”

  “So the police believed he ‘slipped’?”

  “That’s what the chaplain also said. What were the officers supposed to believe? Especially after neither one of them wanted to walk through the front door.”

  “What’s the chaplain’s full name?”

  Sylvia blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “The only chaplain in British Columbia who knows what I do, specifically, is Captain Simon McDonald. I called his office around seven this morning to ask his secretary how he was doing, and he answered just like he always does. He had no idea who you were.”

  The other woman swallowed. Hard. “Ian McKellen. No relation to the—”

  “Actor, yes, I know him too. I wasn’t aware he was in from Ontario.”

  “Boy, you just know everyone, don’t you?”

  “I make it my business to keep track of whomever knows I’m not a garden variety medium, Ms. Elkeles. When you employ people at my level, you start dealing with forces and creatures the general public are less inclined to know about. That means everything to do with my dealings becomes very discreet and tight-knit. You’ll do well to remember that.”

  Sylvia half turned with an impatient flip of her hair. She tipped her head toward the house. “This way.”

  On the way back up the drive, Sylvia almost tripped over a Realtor’s sign awkwardly poking out from between a pair of empty garbage cans. The woman cursed and flipped her hair again.

  “You pulled it off the market?”

  “I can’t sell the damned thing if it’s haunted by a bloodthirsty ghoul, can I?” She stomped up the stairs toward the porch.

  “I thought you said it was a wraith—”

  Sylvia just about threw herself against the front door as a car backfired somewhere down the block. She glared at Rachel,
her eyes reddened with sudden tears. “Surely, Ms. Miller, you can allow me a little leeway with my phrasing.” Her hands shook subtly as she shoved a key in the door and swung it open. “After you.”

  Rachel eyed the other woman a moment before stepping inside. She let her gaze roam across the interior, soaking up the eclectic mix of rich wood fixtures and furniture that leaned more toward comfy-chic. It was a tenuous mix, yet it worked. Between the obvious, though, she spotted the signs of her trade—more peeling paint, and freshly patched dents in both the walls and floors. Needle-thin scratches down the stainless-steel fridge. Blood droplet stains that just couldn’t be lifted from the hardwood.

  Rachel took a quick tour of the ground floor before returning to Sylvia. The other woman was still solidly planted outside the front door. “No one died in the house?”

  “No.” Sylvia stood with her arms crossed, leaning just a touch backward from the threshold. “This house belonged to our parents, but they both died elsewhere. Mom died of cancer, in hospice. My dad fell off a horse and broke his neck.”

  “My condolences. So your brother took on the house?”

  “It was supposed to be sold, and the funds split between us. Kit bought me out, though. He loved this house.” Her eyes were on the road again, her voice just a touch softer. “He could have any high-rise apartment in Vancouver, but he has to stay in this pokey little—”

  “What did he do for a living?”

  “What?”

  “Based on this neighborhood and its proximity to the city, I’d say this is a million-dollar house. Even to a sibling, he would have had to pay out a fair chunk.”

  She narrowed her eyes slightly. “I don’t like your line of questioning.”

  Danger, Will Robinson. A trickle of apprehension rode across the base of Rachel’s neck. She slid the sleeves of her red-and-black biker jacket back slowly, gripping the edge of her helmet like a war mace in her left hand. She began summoning her power, allowing it to coalesce like a slow-burning torch in the center of her chest. “I need to understand the last inhabitant of this house, seeing as you clearly don’t live here—”