Ghost Of A Chance Part 4

"Not just yet. How many people are in the picture?"

Pixie glanced back at it, frowning slightly as she noticed what I'd seen straightaway. "Four. Oh, I see. So now, what, you're a bigot or something?"

"Don't be ridiculous," I said, moving closer to the picture. It was indeed a standard Victorian family portrait, with two men standing behind a seated woman, a small girl leaning on her knee...Except the woman clearly had four arms. "I wonder how a picture of a polter's family found its way into this house? And are they all polters, or just the one?"

"No way to tell," she said, dismissing the picture and wandering around the room.

"Not unless one of them hadn't lost her extra limbs yet," I said, squinting at the child in the picture. "Interesting. I might be able to fell in person if someone was a polter, although my Otherworld radar isn't the best. My father's is much better. Does the child have an extra arm hidden in her pinafore, do you think?"

"Who cares? They don't live here, do they?"

"I doubt it. Some mortal families knew about the polters who lived with them, but I doubt if they'd include them in family photos unless there was a blood tie." I straightened up and glanced at the other pictures. No other family portraits were displayed. "Just out of curiosity-how old were your parents when they died?"

She spun around and glared at me. "You are a bigot! You're a polter bigot!"

"Don't be ridiculous. Would I have offered to take you in if I was?"

"Then why do you keep asking me and asking me and asking me about my parents? What does it matter how old my parents were?"

"Calm down! Polter genetics interests me. The child in that picture has only three arms, but the woman has four."

"She does? Oh. She does. Maybe she's not related or something."

Well, now, that was odd. Polters grew up knowing the ins and outs of basic polter genetics. There were many times when children had fewer arms than their more-than-two-armed parents, mixed parentage being the primary reason. But Pixie didn't seem to know that...which was very strange.

"I was just curious if one of your parents was human, or half-blooded," I said slowly, doing a little gentle probing.

"Deus! My parents are dead, OK? Dead! Will you stop hara.s.sing me about them?"

"Sorry," I apologized, letting the subject drop. Some polters were very touchy about their heritage, especially those who didn't have the protection of the Akas.h.i.+c League and had to make their own way in the mundane world.

"Back to the picture-I think it's a safe bet to say that the family who used to live here was made up at least partially of poltergeists. I wonder what happened to them."

"They were driven away by the endless curiosity of the local townspeople,"

a deep voice said behind me.

Pixie's startled jump was almost as high as mine, although hers had a horizontal element that ended up sending her across the room, leaving me in apparent solitude with the large dark-haired man who all but filled the doorway.

"Who are you?" I asked, reaching behind me for something I could use as a weapon. My hand closed around something smooth and cold.

"I was about to ask you the same question. Please don't steal that greyhound. It's very old, and a favorite of mine."

I held tight to the small but heavy statue of a sitting dog that I remembered seeing below the picture of the polter family. "Steal? I'm not stealing anything. For one thing, my husband owns this house. For another, I don't steal."

He moved into the room in just a few strides, making it feel suddenly small and cramped and extremely full of an evidently angry large man. "You what? You're not my wife."

I frowned, pulling the dog statue around to my front, hoping he wasn't so deranged that I had to bean him with it. "I never said I was!"

He stopped in front of me, his arms crossed over a broad chest. Somewhat dimmed beams of sunlight worked their way through the grime-streaked windows, falling on his face and revealing that angry, deranged, and largely intimidating though he might be, he was also incredibly handsome. I think it was the combination of black-as-sin hair and pale blue eyes.

"You did. You said you were married to the owner. That would be me."

"No, that is my husband, Spider. Who are you?"

The man joined me in a round of frowning. "Adam Dirgesinger."

"Dirgesinger?" That was a polter name. I looked him over carefully, but there were no signs of a poltergeist heritage. He had the normal number of arms and didn't display the restlessness that was common even in the most human-looking polters. "That's your family in the photo?"

"My grandparents, yes." His eyes narrowed.

"So you're a third-generation polter?"

His frown deepened. "What concern is that of yours?"

"None, really," I said with a faint shrug. "I'm just a bit surprised to hear you acknowledge it. Most people wouldn't admit to a polter ancestry to strangers."

"Would you?" he asked, a challenge in his voice.

I summoned up a smile I didn't in the least feel. "I suppose it would depend on the circ.u.mstances."

"All right, Mrs. Whatever-Your-Name-Is..."

I straightened my shoulders and tried to look down my nose at him, something I couldn't quite pull off, since he had a good six inches on me. "It's Marx. Karma Marx. That's Pixie, but she prefers Desdemona."

"Deus, do you have to keep saying it like that?" Pixie glared at both Adam and me.

"Fine, Karma Marx-would you like to tell me just why you feel free to rummage around my house without my permission?"

I pointed the statue at him. "You keep saying that. It's not true. My husband bought this house a few days ago. I'm sorry if the house went into foreclosure or whatever happened to cause you to lose it, but ignoring reality isn't going to do anything to make the situation change."

"You're lying," he said, his eyes filled with disbelief.

I sighed. "Look, Mr. Dirgesinger-"

"Adam," the man interrupted.

"I beg your pardon?" I asked.

"Adam. Call me Adam. I seldom use my last name."

How very odd. For a brief moment, I wondered why he wanted to disown his surname when he was so willing to admit to his ancestry. "Very well. I'm not lying. I don't lie. I'm sorry I don't have the t.i.tle papers on me, but I a.s.sure you that I am entirely serious when I say that my husband now owns this house."

"I find that difficult to believe when I haven't put the house up for sale."

"It's dirty and run down and looks like it's going to fall into the sea," Pixie said, looking around the room. "I like it."

"Hush, you. You're not helping." I took a firmer grip on the dog statue.

"My husband bought the house at some sort of a foreclosure sale, I believe. A couple of days ago."

"I haven't even been home for the last ten days, so I don't see how ..."

The sentence petered out as a look of horror crept into Adam's eyes. Without another word, he ran out of the room, loud footsteps quickly fading into nothing.

I sat down heavily on the nearest chair, a sick feeling of sympathy gripping my stomach. I no longer had on any blinders to the less-than-sterling morals of my husband. It was entirely possible that he had bought the house out from under Adam, without so much as giving him time to clear out his belongings.

A moment later, Adam burst back into the room, shaking a paper beneath my nose and yelling in a way that was anatomically impossible, even for a third-generation polter.

After allowing him to rage at me for a few minutes, I managed to pry the paper out of his fisted hand. "That b.a.s.t.a.r.d! That royal b.a.s.t.a.r.d." He stormed, pacing up and down the length of the sitting room.

I smoothed the paper on my knee and gave it a quick once-over before looking up at where he now loomed over me, his face dark with emotion.

Pixie leaned over my shoulder to read it. "Foreclosure. That's not good, is it?"

"No." I watched Adam for a moment. "Where did you find this?"

"It was in my mailbox. Look at the date!"

I glanced back at the foreclosure notice. It was dated six months before. "I gather from your colorful suggestions of what your mortgage company can do with themselves that this is the first you've heard of foreclosure proceedings?"

"It is!" He snarled an obscenity and stomped over to a small keyhole desk, then yanked a phone book from a drawer. "This is bulls.h.i.+t. I may have been late on a few mortgage payments, but not foreclosure late. No one at the bank ever mentioned that I was at risk to lose the house-no one! I've certainly never had any letters stating the house was going into foreclosure."

The sick feeling in my gut grew. "Perhaps there's been some ma.s.sive mix-up..."

"Like h.e.l.l there is," he said, his eyes cold with fury as he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the phone. "Meredith had better tell me what's going on if he knows what's good for him."

"Meredith?" I asked, the sick feeling in my belly turning to outright horror. "Meredith Bane?"

The look Adam turned on me would have likely sent any sane person screaming from the room, but I was not known for my rationality. "You know him?"

"No, not personally. But I've heard his name mentioned. He's my husband's business partner. Meredith runs the local bank...Oh. Pixie, come over here."

"Des-de-mona! It's not that hard to remember!"

Slowly, Adam hung up the phone, his face a frozen mask. I got to my feet, my hand on Pixie's arm, prepared to shove her out the door and race for the car if Adam took even so much as one threatening step toward us. "Karma... Marx.

Your husband is Spider Marx, the real estate agent?"

I pushed Pixie behind me, backing us up three steps toward the door. "I believe we'll be on our way now. I have a few things to do before tonight-"

My lips clamped down on the sentence. I had a feeling Adam wouldn't appreciate hearing about Spider's plan for the house that night.

"Like finding an outfit to wear at the seance," Pixie said from behind me.

"What?" Adam asked, still coming toward us, his face red with anger.

"What seance? What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"Run, you idiot," I said, spinning around and shoving Pixie none too gently out the door. She must have decided it was wiser to lip off to me than Adam, because she raced for the car.

"You can tell your husband that it'll be a cold day in h.e.l.l before I let the likes of him take possession of my home!" Adam bellowed from the verandah.

Despite his anger, I felt an odd sort of kins.h.i.+p with Adam. I knew what it was like to be on the recipient end of Spider's immoral actions. Although Adam's problems weren't mine, a horribly annoying compulsion to help him refused to be squashed.

I stopped in front of the car and looked back at him. "Look, I'm really very sorry about this whole mess. Clearly something is going on that's not at all right. I don't know what I can do, but I will be happy to talk to Spider about it-"

"You can talk all you like! The house is mine, and it's going to stay mine!"

he yelled, his eyes blazing with a cold blue anger.

"You're understandably angry now, but if we could just sit down and talk this out-"

"There is nothing to talk about. I'll warn you right now, Karma Marx: I protect what is mine. Stay out of my house!"

"That's going to be a little difficult considering she's supposed to be cleaning the house tonight," Pixie pointed out from the safety of the car.

I wanted to strangle her on the spot.

"Clean? You want to clean my hou-" Understanding dawned in his eyes, chased by rage. "You're a d.a.m.ned exterminator, aren't you? You're here to destroy my wards!"

The use of the word "ward" was interesting. It told me there was more to the man in front of me than was readily apparent.

"It's not my choice," I said simply, meeting his furious glare with one that I hoped expressed sympathy. "I will see if there's something that can be done to straighten up this mess. I don't know what I can do, but I will try. Perhaps if you talked to Spider-"

"I don't need your d.a.m.ned help! If your husband tries to step foot in my house, he'll regret it. So help me G.o.d, you'll both regret it!" he bellowed, marching back into the house and slamming the door.

Pixie looked thoughtfully at the house as I got into the car. "He really was p.i.s.sed, huh?"

"Understatement of the year," I murmured as I turned the car around.

She sat back with a faint, satisfied little smile. "Tonight's going to rock. I can't wait to see what he does to the flower chick."

5.

Spider was home when we returned an hour later.

"Keep your cape on until you're in your room," I warned Pixie in a low voice before she got out of the car.

"Why. Is he another bigot?"

"Spider can be extremely unpleasant when he puts his mind to it. I'd rather you were under his radar."