Fairyville (Fairyville #1)(23)
Author: Emma Holly

"Gone mad how?" Zoe felt Mr. "Let’s Take This Slow" move up behind her and fought an urge to cover her br**sts. Somehow, talking on the phone in her kitchen with all the lights on made her nakedness seem a lot less appropriate.

"They’re flinging stones at the guests!" Mrs. Fairfax cried. "And I’m not sure they’re ever going to stop!"

Zoe rubbed the side of her face. She’d "read" the infamous room 410 for a local TV station doing a piece on Arizona hauntings. Four spirits were connected to it that she knew. One was a nondescript "white lady" whose origins no one could ascertain. Another was a gambler from Fairyville’s heyday as a mining town. He’d been shot in his sleep by a rival card cheat. The third and fourth ghosts were abused siblings from the 1950s, who’d run from their guardians only to die of exposure in the their abandoned shell of the inn. Zoe had helped the children cross into the light, though now and then they came back to visit, perhaps just because they could.

None of the ghosts were malevolent, though the white lady and the gambler probably suffered from the spiritual equivalent of OCD. No matter how many guests ran screaming, they never tired of rattling the headboard or playing with the lights, but that was strictly ghostly footsteps phenomena, unnerving but harmless.

Most definitely none of the four had the juice it took to throw stones.

"It sounds like you’ve either picked up a prankster or a poltergeist," Zoe theorized to Mrs. Fairfax. "How old is that granddaughter of yours?"

Zoe wasn’t sure she bought the theory that poltergeists were the products of the turmoil inside adolescent female minds—though pranks certainly could be.

"She’s fourteen," said Mrs. Fairfax. "But it can’t be Candice. She’s with her mother now. Please come get rid of whatever it is. My guests won’t think this is colorful."

"All right," Zoe said, already looking around for her purse. "I’ll be there in ten minutes with the big guns."

"I’ll drive you," Magnus offered after she hung up. Interest lit his handsome face, the eagerness to embrace new experiences that was as natural to him as breathing.

If he’d been anyone else, she knew she could have stayed mad at him. Hell, she was mad. She just wasn’t mad enough to be mean.

"Fine," she said, "but you stay in the lobby until I’m sure it’s safe."

This seemed to amuse him. "No problem… as long as you put on more than your birthday suit before we go."

Chapter Six

Zoe was certain she’d have remembered to put clothes on without Magnus’s reminder. She’d remembered the kitten, after all, whom Queen Rajel was insisting was named Corky.

Naked no more, Zoe carried Corky inside, snuggling him—now sleeping—against her nose. She settled him in a cardboard box nested with an old flannel shirt and some newspaper. Raj el and her court cooed quietly over him, utterly besotted with his fuzziness. Samuel the Swift, Rajel’s boy fairy, was making grand, whispered pronouncements about the hordes of mice Corky would catch.

It was just as well her fairies were occupied. They’d never been much help laying ghosts. If the spirits were stubborn, they were too likely to laugh at a fairy’s order to be gone. Oh, the fairies had sufficient mojo to make them sorry; their power was not proportional to their size, but experience had taught Zoe it was better all around if a spirit decided departing was the wisest choice.

Left to her own resources, she prepared by meditating in the car. Happily, Magnus was driving and did nothing to distract her. Perhaps because she’d deliberately pushed her conflicted feelings from her mind, she was struck by what restful company he could be. Not only did he keep his mouth shut, but his aura was calm and clean, as if he’d been meditating, too.

She felt safe with him, which was odd. She hadn’t known she felt unsafe before.

In hardly any time, she’d attained a deep state of receptiveness. She felt positively floaty by the time he parked across the street from the inn. No fear marred her concentration, no doubts that her skill wouldn’t be enough. The angels she called her "big guns" were gathering already, their presence signaled by subtle changes in the atmosphere—as if the air were pressing tighter around her head. Zoe didn’t see angels like she saw ghosts, but her old mentor, Catherine Sweetwell, had taught her how to tell they were there.

Calling them was the easy part. Angels came to anyone who asked. A person didn’t even need to know their names for that. The challenge lay in releasing resistance to letting them work their magic on her behalf. That took faith and a little practice, but in an emergency almost anyone could do it.

"We’re here," Magnus said, opening her door for her.

She was wearing sneakers, but he helped her down the step from the SUV anyway. His touch was as quiet and reassuring as his company had been. It was as if he knew exactly what she needed to be at her best—though he’d never mentioned any metaphysical leanings. Because the fairies had always avoided him, she’d assumed he had none. Then again, he’d seen her fairies tonight. Not everyone could do that on the first try.

Evidently, as she mulled this over, she spent too long staring up at him.

"What?" he asked, his smile gentle and warm. He appeared to have forgotten they were at odds, and that might have been the most disconcerting thing he’d done yet. An argument didn’t seem to keep him from liking her, not even a little bit.

"Nothing," she said, shaking herself. "Thanks for driving."

He offered his elbow to lead her in, a courtly gesture she couldn’t bring herself to refuse. She was grateful for the support the moment they stepped into the inn’s lobby. Magnus’s energy was a boulder in a pool of chaos. At least three babies were squalling, and it looked like half the inn’s capacity had left their rooms to huddle on the lobby chairs. Most seemed grumpy rather than afraid, but their presence said that more than headboards had been rattled.

A spirit had to make a lot of noise to empty so many rooms.

Mrs. Fairfax circulated among the crowd, trying to put a calm face on the disruption while looking frazzled herself. She rushed to the door as soon as Zoe and Magnus came in.

"Mr. Monroe!" she exclaimed, taking his hand as fervently as if he’d been the one she called. "How good of you to bring Zoe. I swear I don’t know what I’m going to do if this doesn’t stop."

Zoe fought a smile. Even a hysterical, ghost-plagued woman couldn’t ignore Magnus’s appeal.

"Where are the guests from 410?" she asked, hoping to get a preview of what she was up against.

"They’re in the fourth floor hallway, making sure no one else goes in."