Of Ash and Spirit: Piper Lancaster Series Read online

  Of Ash and Spirit

  Piper Lancaster Series

  D.G. Swank

  Denise Grover Swank

  Copyright © 2018 by Denise Grover Swank

  Cover art and design by Amalia Chitulescu Digital Art

  Developmental editing by Angela Polidoro

  Copyedit by Shannon Page

  Proofreading by Carolina Valdez-Schneider

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Also by D.G. Swank

  Also by Denise Grover Swank

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “I sense a spirit here. An older man.”

  “I knew it,” Miss Louisa Carlisle said under her breath.

  I pivoted around the living room cluttered with knickknacks and vintage furniture, including a baby grand piano in front of the picture windows overlooking the front yard. I held my palms out and kept my gaze fixed on the upper walls. This was my “sensing the environment” pose. Many of my clients thought it made me look more convincing.

  Just another day in the life of Piper Lancaster, the gentle ghost whisperer.

  “He’s confused.” I moved closer to the staircase, pulsing my palms slightly as if picking up psychic vibes. “He’s trapped between our world and the spiritual plane. I can feel his presence over here.”

  “Yes!” she exclaimed excitedly. “My father fell down the stairs when I was in college. He died there at the bottom.”

  I nodded. Her dead father hadn’t told me, of course. Rhys Sanders, my friend and co-conspirator, had provided that useful tidbit.

  “He makes all kinds of racket on the stairs,” she said. “Usually at night.”

  “He fell down the stairs in the middle of the night,” I said. “That’s why he’s so active then.” Or the more likely explanation—despite the fancy neighborhood, it was an old house in disrepair, and her imagination probably ran wild whenever she heard the creaks and groans of the settling floors and walls.

  Not that I could blame her for that. She was hardly the only person whose imagination had run wild after the sudden reappearance of the Lost Colony of Roanoke nearly two months ago. In fact, my client bookings had increased from a handful of visits a month to one or two a day.

  Everyone had a pet theory as to why the first full-fledged English colony on North American land had completely disappeared over four hundred years ago. The governor had left one hundred and eighteen men, women, and children in 1587 on Roanoke Island in current-day North Carolina, only to return three years later and find nothing. Not only were the colonists missing, but every last trace of the colony’s existence had disappeared.

  Everyone also had a pet theory as to why the Lost Colony had so suddenly reappeared. The official statement was that the ruins had been uncovered by a storm, but most people weren’t buying it. Many of the naysayers attributed the phenomenon to the supernatural or even aliens, but my own theory was much less sensationalistic: tourism had taken a dive after the latest hurricane hit the Outer Banks, and someone had been brilliant enough to perpetrate an elaborate hoax to boost the flailing numbers tenfold. Maybe more. And plenty of us were reaping the benefits. Sure, Roanoke Island was a seven-hour drive from Asheville, but the paradigm shift hadn’t been limited to the island. The “impossible” had happened, which meant anything else could. With so many people believing the village had reappeared due to some kind of hocus-pocus, they were suddenly seeing supernatural events everywhere. Which was great if you were in the ghost-hunting and banishing business.

  Asheville had already been a kooky city; now it was more out in the open. What had once been a little side business intended to help people settle their subconscious demons had become something more. I was busier than ever.

  If I ever met the Roanoke tricksters, I’d have to thank them. Except I didn’t much like to think about Roanoke Island, let alone my own family’s connection to it.

  Miss Louisa squeezed the tissue in her hand. She was an elderly woman dressed in tailored pants and a silk blouse. In my own brief research, I’d discovered she had inherited her parents’ house thirty years ago. She made her money, barely, as a piano teacher and had never married.

  “Can you talk to him?” she asked.

  “Your father?”

  She nodded.

  “I can try. There’s no guarantee he’ll answer, but go ahead and ask him a question.”

  She glanced around. “Can you see him? Where should I talk?”

  “At the base of the stairs. He’s listening.”

  She looked nervous as her gaze bounced around the staircase. “Daddy, why are you still here?”

  What answer was she looking for? My clients often needed to know their loved ones were happy with both their situation and with the choices of the family members they’d left behind. Sometimes they needed to be absolved of guilt. I used to feel bad about faking answers from their loved ones—there was no getting around the fact that it was deceit—but I had quickly realized I was offering them something priceless, and it just so happened to be absolutely free.

  That said, I willingly took generous tips.

  Miss Louisa was waiting for me to speak. I paused for a moment, pretending to listen, then said, “Your father says he feels comfortable here.”

  She nodded, looking relieved. “Can you ask him if Momma’s there with him?”

  From what Rhys had put together, Miss Louisa’s mother had died of a heart attack in the hospital about ten years ago. I waited a few moments. “Your father says your momma has moved on,” I said, “but he stays to watch over you.”

  Tears filled her eyes and she dabbed a corner with her tissue. “Daddy, you were always so good to me.”

  I turned toward her, putting my back to “her father,” and lowered my voice. “Do you want him to stay, Miss Louisa? Or would you like me to send him on his journey?”

  Surprise washed over her face. “Can you do that?”

  I gave her a soft smile. “Yes. If that’s what you want.”

  “But what does Daddy want?”

  I’d spent the last fifteen minutes roaming Miss Louisa’s two-story Lakeview Park home, looking at photos of her parents and her siblings and her nieces and nephews. It struck me that she’d spent her life teaching children piano lessons in the home where she’d always lived. Miss Louisa was lonely, and though her voice had trembled with emotion as she told me about her strange experiences, there’d been no fear in it. The signs of the supernatural she’d experienced were fairly standard—noises in the middle of t
he night and photos on the staircase wall that repeatedly became crooked. Her last question answered my own. Miss Louisa wanted me to validate her belief that her father was in her house and to give her the opportunity to communicate with him. She wanted this haunting.

  I turned to her and took her hand in mine. “I think there’s a reason your daddy hasn’t moved on, Miss Louisa. I think he’s worried about you.”

  Her eyes flew wide. “Me?”

  “He doesn’t want you to be alone.”

  Tears tracked down her cheeks, and she dabbed at them with a damp tissue. “But is he happy?”

  “Yes,” I said, “he’s happy to watch over you.”

  She gave the stairs a worried look. “Should we ask him what he wants?” she asked again.

  “We can,” I said, still speaking softly, “but your father is able to cross at any time. I don’t think he’s confused or stuck here. When I send spirits on their journey, it’s usually because they have made the host family’s life miserable. It sounds like you’ve coexisted with your father for years. I suspect he wants to stay. It’s a matter of whether you want the eccentricities in your home to go away.”

  “Eccentricities . . . ,” she murmured as her head bobbed. “That’s a good way to put it.” She snuck a glance at the staircase. “I think I want Daddy to stay.”

  I offered her a warm smile. “Then we’ll leave him to it. But if you change your mind, just give me a call. I would be more than happy to come back and smudge your house with white sage.”

  “You’re a sweet girl, Piper,” Miss Louisa said, reaching up to pat my cheek. She stood nearly a half foot shorter than my 5’7” height. “Tabby said I should call you and not that other guy.”

  “Other guy?”

  “You know, the one on the billboard. The guy with all the equipment.” I couldn’t help but take some pleasure in her disgusted shudder. I knew who she was talking about, of course. My direct competition. My former boyfriend. He was the main reason I’d started this little side business. I was a thorn under his skin that wouldn’t go away, which was exactly what he deserved.

  “Gill Gillespie?” I asked casually.

  “That’s the one. Tabby said he and his guys were like a swarm of locusts, carrying all kinds of strange equipment into her house and disrupting everything. They kicked her out for a whole night, but they claimed they couldn’t find a thing. Then she called you. She said you were so quiet and sweet, walking through her house with your smoking stick and chanting, and then all the fuss in her house left with you.”

  I remembered Tabby Gaines. She’d been certain the previous owners were haunting her house, so I’d told her she was right and smudged everything. Before leaving, I told her the problem had been solved, but she should call me if there were any more disturbances. There weren’t. My certainty that I’d taken care of my clients’ problems was usually enough to make them believe it. There was something to be said for psychosomatic cures. “I was happy to help her, just like I’m happy to help you, Miss Louisa. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  She shook her head. “Oh, honey, you’ve helped me more than you know.”

  I grabbed my purse off the entry table and motioned to the matte black baby grand piano. “Do you still play?”

  Her hands didn’t look gnarled from arthritis, but one could never tell.

  Laughing, she patted the air. “Not like I used to.”

  “You used to play for your daddy, didn’t you?” The thought had just occurred to me, but it seemed like a sound logical leap.

  Tears swam in her eyes. “He loved listening to me play.”

  Something tickled the back of my neck and I said, “He still does. He loves it when you play ‘Moon River.’”

  Where had that come from? I was never usually that specific. Nor that spontaneous. It was dangerous.

  She gasped and clutched her tissue-filled fist to her chest. It took her a moment to recover.

  “That was Daddy’s favorite,” she finally said, reaching into the pocket of her slacks.

  A chill ran down my spine.

  Just a lucky guess, Piper. Quit buying what you’re selling.

  “What can I give you for your time?”

  “Helping you is reward enough, Miss Louisa.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said as she shook her head and pulled several folded bills from her pocket. “Tabby said she gave you sixty dollars.” She shoved it into my hand. “You take this.”

  I took the bills but still held them in front of me. “Technically I shouldn’t charge you. Many people don’t consider this a real service.”

  “Shows what they know, and besides, you didn’t charge me,” she said as she gave my hand a tiny shove. “I insist on giving you the money. There’s a difference.”

  Indeed, there was, which was why I tended to only take referrals from previous clients who tipped well. The topic of fees invariably came up at some point, and the fact that I never charged was a selling point to many of my clients. If I had charged, it would have raised eyebrows and elicited suspicions of fraud, especially since there were several other paranormal investigation groups that showed up for free. But that was where my similarity to other groups ended. I was so different than what most people expected—a woman in shorts and a T-shirt who used sweet-smelling smudge sticks and talked to their loved ones in soothing tones—that they were grateful for the lack of intrusion and results. Despite all of his fancy EMF and temperature meters, Gill’s clients’ homes continued to have “activity” after they left. Only one of the homes I’d visited hadn’t been cleared, and it turned out that the banging they heard afterward was from an overgrown tree branch.

  Word had spread over the last six months. If you wanted an expensive circus to show up at your front door, you called Gill Gillespie and his band of idiots. If you wanted results, you called me. And people were more than happy to tip me for those results.

  Sometimes they gave me money. Sometimes they gave me homegrown tomatoes. Beggars can’t be choosers, and besides, it was driving Gill stark raving mad that I had more clients than he did these days, and for that alone, I’d do a good half of these jobs for free. For now, anyway. I knew it wasn’t sustainable, but it was what I had for now.

  I headed out Miss Louisa’s front door, and as I crossed over the threshold, I heard an older man’s voice in my right ear, clear as day.

  “Thank you.”

  I came to a sudden stop on the porch, and Miss Louisa asked, “Are you okay, dear?”

  I gave a tiny shake. That was the fifth time this week I’d heard a phantom voice on one of my jobs. The first time the voice had been a whisper, but this was much louder. I was losing it. “I’m fine. The heat caught me off guard.”

  “It’s a hot one,” she agreed. “Dog days of summer.”

  “It sure is.” Technically the dog days of summer ended in the middle of August, which was over a week ago, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

  I walked toward my car, parked in the driveway, and reached for the door handle.

  “You’re in danger,” I heard a woman say.

  Startled, I dropped my hand and spun toward the source, relieved to see an older woman standing in the driveway at the back of my car. At least this voice had a tangible source, but the woman looked incredibly old and frail. I had no idea how she’d gotten there on foot, let alone silently enough to sneak up on me. Especially in that bright orange house dress covered in white kittens.

  “I’m sorry?” I said in confusion.

  “You’re in danger,” she repeated. “The wave is coming.”

  I shook my head. “What wave? A heat wave?” Sure, it was hot for Asheville, but not exactly deadly.

  Her cloudy eyes held mine. “Be ready.” Then she began to hobble down the sidewalk.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end again, and I scanned the area, trying to determine if anyone was watching. Had Gill found out about my appointment and convinced this woman to take part
in some stupid practical joke? But there was no one else around.

  I did a double take when I realized the woman who’d spoken to me was nowhere to be seen. She couldn’t have possibly scuttled away so fast, could she have? The only thing that looked out of place was a small pile of dirt about twenty feet down on the sidewalk and a wisp of black smoke evaporating into the air.

  An ambulance turned down the corner and pulled in front of a house down the street, its lights and sirens turned off. A man in a uniform got out of the passenger side and made his way to the front door, where he met a woman dressed in scrubs as she emerged from the front door.

  “Oh dear,” Miss Louisa said from the porch. “It looks like poor Martha died.”

  “What?” I asked, spinning to face her.

  “That’s her hospice nurse. The family’s been waiting for the end for the last few days. I’m going to miss seeing her brightly colored house dresses around the neighborhood.”

  “Brightly colored house dresses?” I asked, my voice trailing off as I thought of the woman who’d just issued me a cryptic warning. Part of me wanted to ask Miss Louisa if she’d seen her too . . . but what if she said no?

  “God rest her soul,” Miss Louisa said, clucking her tongue. Then she walked back inside.

  But I remained in place, watching the EMTs pull the gurney out of the back of the ambulance. I was being ridiculous. Half the people on this street were retirees.

  I had not just seen a ghost.

  I wasn’t the only one watching the scene unfold. A guy standing at the end of the street was tuning in with an equal amount of interest. He appeared to be far younger than most of the residents of this neighborhood—probably in his late twenties or early thirties—and he was overdressed for the heat in a medium-gray suit. But it was his looks that really caught my attention. His black hair and short-trimmed beard and mustache made a sexy contrast to his suit, and his perfect features were drawn into a scowl. Sexiness aside, the scowl made it clear he didn’t like what he saw. His gaze lifted to mine, and I gasped.