Haunted by Kelley Armstrong Read Free Book Online

grown used to it by now.
    “Nice gig,” I said. “Is it almost over? I need to talk to you.”
    “Jaime?” the host said, leaning forward. “What is it? Do you see something?”
    “Seems you have a resident ghost,” Jaime said. “Normally I need to open myself up to see them, but sometimes they shove their way right through. Impatient as children.” A razor-sharp glare my way. “Rude children.”

    “Rude? You’re a necro. I sure as hell don’t expect you to jump every time a ghost—”
    “Can you see him?” the host whispered.
    “Her. It’s a woman.” Jaime paused for effect. “A witch.”
    A murmured gasp from the audience.
    “Not a real witch, of course,” Jaime said, her voice taking the soft singsong tone of a storyteller. “Though she thought she was. Thought she was all-powerful, but she wasn’t.”
    “ Excuse me?”
    “She lived by violence, and died by it. And now she’s a tormented, lonely spirit, caught between the worlds, looking for redemption.”
    I snorted.
    “And if she’s not”—Jaime aimed another glare my way—“she should be, because she has a lot to atone for.”
    I rolled my eyes and walked off the stage.
     
    In the wings, I prepared a second plan of attack. When Jaime stepped off the stage ten minutes later, I fell into step beside her.
    “Okay, now that you have that off your chest, let’s talk. Obviously you know who I am.”
    She kept walking.
    “You want a formal introduction?” I said. “Fine. I’m Eve Levine, ghost. You’re Jaime Vegas, necromancer. Now, what I need is—”
    She had veered around a corner before I noticed. I had to backtrack and jog to catch up.
    “I know you can hear me,” I said. “And see me. So let’s cut the crap and—”

    She turned into an open dressing room and slammed the door.
    I followed. “Maybe I can walk through doors, but that doesn’t give you any right to slam them on me. It’s still rude.”
    “Rude?” she said, spinning on me so fast I took an involuntary step back. “Rude? You just—the most important spot of my career, the chance of a lifetime and you—”
    Her hand flew to her mouth. She dove into the bathroom and leaned over the toilet, gagging.
    “If it makes you feel any better, she has the same effect on me.”
    Jaime wheeled, eyes flashing. She pulled herself to her full height…at least five inches below my six feet. Very intimidating.
    “Find yourself another necro, Eve. One who’s stupid enough to let you speak to Savannah. And my advice? When you find one, at least make some effort to follow proper protocol. That shit you pulled out there may have worked in life, but it doesn’t work now.”
    There was a proper protocol? Damn.
    Jaime stalked past me into the dressing room. When I followed, I found her rooting through an oversize makeup bag. She took out a bowl and a few pouches of herbs.
    “A banishing mixture?” I said. “Look, Jaime, I know you don’t do a lot of real necromancy, so I’ll let you in on a little secret. That mixture only works on human ghosts. For it to work on a supernatural, you have to be a damned good necromancer and, no offense, but—”
    Someone jostled me from behind. A physical jostle that, considering I was in the living world, should have been impossible…which meant that whoever hit me had to be another ghost.
    “Watch where you’re going there, sweetheart.”
    I looked over my shoulder to see a guy about a half foot shorter than me, dressed in spats and a straw hat, with a machine gun slung over one shoulder. He grinned, tipped his hat, and slid past.
    I was on a sidewalk, across from a soot-crusted brick building with boarded-up windows and a sheet of paper plastered on the door. I sharpened my vision to read the paper on the door across the road. A notice of closure, in accordance with the Prohibition Act of 1920.
    Ghost-world Chicago. Like most major cities in the afterlife, the landscape of Chicago was frozen in its heyday, and many of the