Excerpt: Dead Right

Hey! The second book in the Wolftown series, Dead Right, is coming out this fall. So here for spooky season is a bit where we find out that the really scary part of this world is the government, ooooooooooo.

If you haven’t read Unfinished Business (book 1), why not? There’s time to catch up before book 2 comes out.

Up close, the Fed brought back other memories for me. He was probably six-foot two or so, taller than me and the grey wolf escorting him, and his short black hair stayed unruffled in the breezes that swirled through the street. He wore blue glass sunglasses—Oakleys, I saw now that he was closer—over a mustache and goatee that looked like he was trying to be cool ten years ago. The suit he wore was only remarkable in that it was a dark East Coast suit in a Chicago summer, but it looked neatly tailored, and the tie, red with black diamonds on it, felt like a standard-issue government tie.

He looked exactly like the guys in college whose parents were paying their full tuition, who didn’t have to work at their classes because their family would have a job waiting for them when they graduated. That’s unfair, I told myself. Maybe he’s a government lifer, or maybe he’s one of the exceptions to the usual morass of nepotism and incompetence that swirls around in the BEA.

Then he opened his mouth.

“Hi there,” he said, addressing Vic. “I presume you let Ms. Hachimura know I’m here.”

The brown wolf’s ears twitched and went back a centimeter, just about the amount Czoltan’s go back when he can’t control his annoyance but is trying to. “I think Captain Hachimura is still inside. I was talking to Mr. Kim here.”

The agent sighed, a little too dramatically. “All right, I’ll just go inside, then.” And he turned, still without looking at me, and took a step toward the door.

I wanted him to go inside so I could leave, so I kept my mouth shut. But Vic, trying to be helpful maybe, said, “You don’t have to. Mr. Kim here bound the ghost already.”

My stomach sank as the guy stopped. He didn’t turn right away; he stopped like a guy in a movie hearing something shocking. Then he did the slow turn and lowered his sunglasses to really look at me for the first time. He probably thought that was intimidating somehow, like he was deigning to notice me and I should be impressed with how much he didn’t need to pay attention to me, but I just found it really fucking annoying.

“Mr….Kim?”

“Hi,” I said, pushing back the bright-hot anger coming from Penny. “Jae Kim. And you are…?”

He took a step back toward me. “On whose authority did you bind the ghost?”

“Captain Hachimura is the officer in charge and she requested my assistance. I provided it.” I tried to make my emphasis on “in charge” not subtle at all.

The agent stopped in front of me, sunglasses back in place, and looked down at me. “I’m sure that was very neighborly of you,” he said. “But the BEA is here now, so you can hand over the ghost.”

Don’t!

Don’t worry, I told Penny. I hadn’t believed her story about government agents selling teenage girl ghosts, but this guy was making it seem more credible.

“It’s no trouble,” I said. “Captain Hachimura is going to identify the ghost and then I’ll turn it over to its nearest living relative, as is the law.”

He frowned. “I know how you people work,” he said. “All ‘I know the law’ and then you turn around and sell the ghost to a dealer who can give you a fake document of relationship.”

“I’m not—”

“Jesus Christ, it’s so exhausting, too. Every time we arrest one of you, two more pop up. Your dealers are worse. Just hand over the damn ghost and don’t make me go through the paperwork.”

“First of all,” I said, digging in my pocket, “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m a private investigator.” He got tense, so I picked out my wallet carefully and showed it to him—Christ, he really thought he was an action hero, like I was going to pull a gun on him in front of the two werewolves—and pulled out my license. “See?”

He peered at it and then straightened. Before he could say anything, I went on. “Second, you want to provide some identification to me so I know you’re not what you’re accusing me of?”

Vic looked confused as the agent dug for his ID in his jacket pocket. “What is he accusing you of?”

“Ghost chasers,” I said. “Like ambulance chasers, but worse. They hang around and bind newly-released ghosts and sell them to people who want ghosts.”

“Shit. That’s for real?”

“Sure. There’s a big black market in ghosts. Problem is, you can’t always tell when someone’s death is going to make them a ghost, so they usually hang out near wars, hospitals, places like that.” I side-eyed the agent. “If the BEA always showed up this quickly, they’d be out of business.”

The guy didn’t show any sign of having heard my jibe as he folded back his badge holder and showed me the card with his picture and the name “Rock Zawada” under the heading “Bureau of Extranormal Affairs.” It looked legit to me.

“Shit,” said Vic. “Fucking ghouls.”

“Ghouls are something else,” Agent Zawada said. “Regardless, you don’t have authority to take possession of this ghost now that the BEA is on site. Please hand her over.”

I swear to God if you give me to him I’ll scream so loud—

Don’t worry, I told Penny again. He’s trying to intimidate me, but I know the law. To Zawada, I said, “The BEA has jurisdiction over unbound ghosts when it arrives at a scene. But this ghost isn’t unbound. Federal law says that the person who binds a ghost has the right and responsibility to deliver it to the next of kin, and that’s what I’m doing.”

Vic turned and talked into his radio in a low voice. Zawada took off his sunglasses, his brown eyes fixed on me. My skin chilled a bit. The problem with guys who think they’re action heroes is that to them, you’re either a bystander or a villain, and they tend to gravitate to action-hero-type solutions to conflict, which are big and flashy and often violent. I felt like I was being pushed into the “villain” category. “While that’s the letter of the law,” he said slowly, “the BEA retains ultimate authority over ghosts, and I can take her from you.”

He can’t, I told Penny quickly, though I wasn’t entirely sure about that.

“So why don’t you save me the trouble and just hand her over?” he went on.

“Funny thing,” I said. “Whenever someone asks me to ‘save them the trouble,’ it turns out that the ‘trouble’ they’re talking about is something they can’t actually do. So no, I don’t think I will ‘save you the trouble,’ Agent Zawada. If you want this ghost, I’ll give you the number of my lawyer, and you can negotiate with him.”

In my head, Penny’s anger and fear settled. That allowed me to take a breath and calm myself further.