"Your guess is as good as mine."

"The old guy Kelly talked to on the phone-"

"Leonard."

"Sick is a hell of a long way from dead."

"Tell me about it."

"Um..." I could practically hear Evan's mind working. "You need to get out of there, Nicki. The old guy could be a psycho or something. I'm having visions of Anthony Perkins and the Bates Motel."

"Ugh." I shuddered, partly from the thought of the famous shower scene, and partly from the cold wrought iron beneath my butt. "Enough with the visions. Believe me, being able to see things that aren't there ain't what it's cracked up to be."

Silence.

"That was a joke, Evan."

"It wasn't funny, Nicki. When are you coming home?"

"Kelly's determined to search through the house for keepsakes, and Leonard's invited us to dinner. I think we'll be here awhile." I hesitated, knowing Evan wouldn't like this next part any more than I did. "And just so you know, the house may be haunted."

I could hear his sudden intake of breath. "What did you see? Who did you see? You didn't talk to them, did you? You should come home, Nicki."

I was touched by his concern, but as usual, calming Evan down calmed me down. "It's okay. I didn't see anything. Not yet, anyway. Kelly and I met a couple of guys who give ghost tours and they told her the house was haunted, but who knows? At any rate, as soon as Leonard invited us in, she jumped on it."

"This Leonard guy sounds like a nutcase."

"I'm pretty sure he's harmless." Leonard might be a liar, but he didn't strike me as dangerous. "Just a lonely old man. If you met him, you'd see what I mean. And Joe's here. It'll be okay."

"You be careful, Nicki. You know how quickly things can turn ugly."

Do I ever.

"And I'm not just talking about your hair," Evan added, making me grin.

"You're just jealous because pink streaks don't work for you, pretty boy."

"Neither does Vin Diesel, but I'll survive." I could hear the smile in Evan's voice. "Now Vin's personal trainer... there's somebody to be jealous of."

"Slut."

"Skank."

When I hung up the phone a few minutes later, I felt much better. Touching base with Evan always grounded me.

A rustle came from the bushes to my right, and I glanced over to find I was being watched. A pair of bright green eyes surveyed me calmly, those of a cat curled up in the fallen leaves. The orange and brown shading of her coat had rendered her almost invisible. The cat rose and slid from the bushes, giving me a cautious mew as she came to rub against my ankles.

"Hey you." I stroked her, enjoying the way she leaned into me. I'd always liked cats, but never had one. "Aren't you pretty?"

She answered with another mew, earning herself a scratch under the chin. Green eyes slitted in bliss, then shot wide at a sudden rattling sound. A leaf rolled by, and the cat pounced, swiping it with a paw and sending it careening across the bricks. She was after it instantly, her fickle attentions now focused on play instead of petting.

"I hate cats."

The woman's voice made me jump.

"Horrible creatures, leave hair everywhere."

Psycho Barbie took a seat in the wrought-iron chair facing me, crossing her legs in a choreographed slide worthy of a fashion model.

Conversely, I straightened, spine stiff as a ramrod. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

The bitter-eyed blonde from the funeral home. Here, in Savannah.

Red lips smiled a flawless smile, and my blood ran cold.

"Don't look so surprised, Nicki. Just because you've been left alone doesn't mean you've been forgotten." A tilt of a blond head, the perfect pose, tres chic. "I told you we'd be watching." Barbie glanced idly around the courtyard, then back at me. "Nice house. I feel right at home here."

I was so screwed.

"Wha-" I licked lips gone very dry. "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

"It's time we had a little chat." Psycho Barbie's smile turned smug, somewhat sly. "You met my master the other night. Halloween is his favorite holiday, after all. One never knows in which guise he'll appear, but blond rock stars and leather-clad bikers seem to be among his favorites."

"Sammy," I murmured, not even realizing I'd said his name aloud.

"Strangely enough, he's quite taken with you." Her gaze flicked over my khakis and denim jacket. "He likes your sister, too, but you seem to be the one he prefers." She shrugged as if there were no accounting for taste. "And what my master wants, he gets."

I stared at her, heart pounding, the way a mouse would watch a snake. "I-"

"You should've helped me with that lying bastard, Keith," she interrupted. "His wife wasn't supposed to know about the money-that was our money, Keith's and mine, our little 'love fund.'" Psycho Barbie smiled as she said it, as though it were a joke, but it was an ugly smile. "Instead, you and your sister saw to it that he looked like a hero to his family... a real saint. All those grateful, mealy-mouthed prayers have slipped him beyond my reach." Her flawless mask slipped for a moment while naked rage glowed in her eyes. "I'm going to love making you and your meddling twin pay for that."

"Wait just a minute!" The hostility in the air was palpable, like a shimmer of heat from the cold bricks beneath our feet. "This is between you and your boyfriend." Your rich, married boyfriend, I thought, though I didn't say it. "You lived your life, you made your choices, and they had nothing to do with us." If they hadn't been out drinking at the country club, they'd probably both still be alive, but I didn't say that either. "Don't drag us into it. It's not Kelly's fault for trying to do the right thing when somebody asked her to, and it's not mine either."

"Doing the right thing is so overrated," she sighed, touching a perfectly manicured nail to her chin.

"Listen..." I took a shot at blunt honesty. "I don't mean to be cruel, but you're dead. And so is he. It's over. It's done. You need to move on and leave me and my sister alone."

Psycho Barbie cocked her head, still smiling. "You don't understand," she said. "My master has made me an offer I can't refuse. My eternal soul in exchange for one of yours." She shrugged a black-clad shoulder, toying with the freshwater pearls gleaming at her neck. "What's a ghoul to do?"

And just like that, anger replaced fear. I wanted to snatch those pearls and shove them down her throat, but I knew my fingers would find only empty air. The dead can manifest physically, sometimes even manipulate objects, but that ability didn't seem to go both ways. The living can't lay a finger on a spirit, no matter how much they want to.

The only thing I could do was call her bluff. I leaned in, bringing my face closer to hers. Her eyes held the cold flatness of a cobra's, but I refused to panic. "Back off, bitch." I pushed myself up from the chair and took a few steps away from the table, just in case the cobra decided to strike. "If you want my soul, you're going to have to kill me to get it, and I don't really think you're up to that." I made myself sneer, though my stomach felt like ice. "It might mess up your hair." That chic blond updo must've cost a pretty penny.

Barbie-for that was her name in my mind-lost her smile but not her focus. "I'm not going to kill you, little goth girl." She rose from her chair, languid, every movement a study in graceful control. "But by the time I'm finished with you, you'll probably wish I had."

CHAPTER 11.

I rushed up the stairs to Peaches's room to find the door closed. "Kelly?" I didn't bother to knock, just opened it.

And there I found her, sitting in the dark. The curtains were drawn, sashes pulled down to block the light. A single candle guttered in the draft I'd created by opening the door.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Kelly gave me a look that was both guilty and defiant. She didn't say anything at first, not until I turned on the overhead light and saw what she held in her hand. "I had to try," was all she said then.

The scrying mirror. She cradled it in her lap, reflective side down, but I was sure she'd been staring into it just a moment ago.

"Are you nuts? What are you doing with that thing?"

"What do you think I'm doing with it, Nicki?" she said waspishly, obviously not happy at being caught. "I'm trying to contact Peaches, of course."

I stared at her, scared and frustrated beyond bearing. She was up here conjuring spirits while I was trying to keep one away from us. "Why?" I really didn't understand. "Peaches is gone, let her go!"

"Because I'm worried her spirit isn't at rest, and because I need to tell her I'm sorry, dammit!" Kelly's voice rose. "I was driving the car when she died, and I need to tell her I'm sorry. Don't you get it?"

I drew a deep breath. Here was the heart of the problem, the true reason we were in Savannah. My therapist would be so proud. "It was an accident, Kelly. It wasn't your fault."

Her face twisted. "Easy for you to say. You weren't there."

"No, but I've seen Peaches, talked to her. She doesn't blame you."

Kelly looked away, swiping angrily at her eyes. She still clutched the mirror. "You've seen her-good for you. I haven't seen her. Not yet, anyway." She drew a deep breath, then looked at the mirror in her lap, tracing the bronze curves on the handle with a finger. "Besides, what does it hurt?"

I sighed. Opening yourself to the spirit world was not a good idea.

I'd never told Kelly everything that happened with Caprice and Granny Julep. I didn't like to think about it, mostly, and liked talking about it even less. The fear was fading, but the hard lessons I learned were not, and I preferred it that way. "A powerful voodoo woman warned me against inviting the spirits in, and she was right." Granny Julep might have tricked me and tried to turn me into a zombie, but she'd never lied to me. "She said that just because spirits are drawn to your energy doesn't mean you have to give it to them. Not all spirits are good spirits."

Kelly made an exasperated sound, rolling her eyes.

This was my own fault. I didn't have the courage to say Caprice's name aloud, particularly in this house, so my telling of that story would have to wait for another day.

Instead of taking the blame for Kelly's ignorance, however, I said sourly, "You've spent way too much time watching Ghosthunters on the Sci-Fi channel. Dealing with spirits is not the glamorous job it seems." I was being sarcastic, of course-hanging around with nerds in dark houses at two o'clock in the morning was hardly my idea of glamorous. "Take, for instance, the nasty spirit I just met in the courtyard."

Kelly's eyes got big. She finally put the mirror aside, laying it facedown on the bed.

"Keith Morgan's girlfriend is here, in this house, and she's pissed."

"What did she do? What did she say?" Kelly seemed more fascinated than scared, the big dummy.

"She's really mad at you for telling her boyfriend's wife about the money." I wasn't above blaming everything on Kelly if it got her to move her butt. "She wanted him in Hell, with her, and you messed up her plans." I sighed, shaking my head. "I guess she followed us here."

"I was just trying to help," Kelly said. Finally, she looked a little nervous. "What was I supposed to do, ignore a dead man's last wish?"

"She's mad at me, too," I admitted reluctantly. Barbie's face flashed into my mind's eye, twisted with anger over Keith Morgan and the role Kelly and I played in his passing. Why had she shown up now? Here?

I'd known from the beginning that this house was trouble. The fact that Barbie felt "at home" here was a very bad sign as far as I was concerned. "I really think we need to leave."

"Poor woman." Kelly shook her head sadly, ignoring my last comment.

"Poor woman? She's a cobra." A well-dressed, well-kept cobra. Beautiful from a distance, vicious up close. "Whatever pity you're feeling, save it for someone who deserves it."

"Don't you see, Nicki?" Kelly's butt was stuck to the bed, and I was ready to leave it there. "We can't ignore this poor soul. We have to do something."

"Do what, exactly?" My temper was rising. "She's dead, she's pissed, and she's out to get us."

"Nicki, could you just calm down and think for a second? What could she possibly do to us? She's dead. A lost soul in need of our help. We have to free her from the earthly plane."

The earthly plane?

"Are you crazy?" I asked. "Because you're starting to sound it."

"You need to talk to her."

"I did talk to her!"

"You need to talk to her again," Kelly insisted. "She's confused. Her anger is clouding her judgment. You need to explain that she's dead now, that she needs to cross over."

I rolled my eyes, exasperated. "I told her that."

"Maybe you didn't do it right."

My mouth fell open. "Didn't do it right? Is there some secret, special way to tell somebody they're dead?" I was being completely sarcastic. "Gee, I'm sorry. Somebody obviously forgot to give me the course material. Maybe I should take a class on the Internet-'How to Talk to the Dead in Five Easy Lessons.' Smoke and mirrors extra."

Kelly ignored me and kept talking. "Her spirit needs to be put to rest, and I can't do it. I only see male spirits, remember?"

"And the point is?" Besides you being an idiot?

"You need to cross this spirit over. It's the only way to get her to leave us alone." She said that a bit too hopefully. "The very least you can do is try."

What the hell? "Do I look like an idiot to you? She threatened me, she threatened you. She followed us all the way to Savannah with revenge on her mind." Then it hit me. "I get it now-you're on some cockeyed quest to be the Peace Corps volunteer of the psychic world, aren't you?"

Kelly's lip twitched in the beginnings of a smile, but I wasn't trying to be funny.

"And if not this spirit, some other spirit. You're hoping to see a ghost. You're dying to see a ghost. You think all this psychic stuff is cool, and that we"-I moved my hand back and forth between us to emphasis my point-"we are special." I gave a snort. "We're freaks, that's all."

Kelly glared at me, defiant. "You told me to wave my freak flag higher, Nicki, and you just said it-we're freaks. 'Cut loose, be yourself,' you said."

She had me there. That's the problem with giving advice-you're too often expected to take it. I turned to the window, snatching aside the curtains and raising the sash, letting fresh air flood the room. An oak tree stood outside the window, still green despite the cool weather, draped with Spanish moss.

Kelly stood up. "You've got a chance to do something good here, Nicki, and all you're thinking about is yourself. What do you think Peaches would've wanted us to do?"

I could honestly say, "I have no idea."