The Haunted Heart by Jane Kolven

Author:Jane Kolven [Kolven, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2022-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Despite what she’d told Nisha, Kara couldn’t wait. If the key to Barb’s mystery rested with Miss Pythia, who was gone without a trace, and Nan, who was unconscious, then Kara was going to pick the lock. She didn’t want to upset Nisha, so she maintained the facade of patience. Nisha was stressed about Nan’s health and well-being, and Kara didn’t want her to have to worry about anything else. It also helped to have her conveniently absent, since she probably wouldn’t have approved of what Kara was up to, anyway.

And so Kara’s quest to figure out Barb’s unfinished business continued alone, without satisfactory progress. The stupid amount of money she’d spent on the private investigator didn’t yield much. In fact, she’d learned more about Nan’s private life in one night at the hospital. The investigator’s findings would have been more useful if he had looked into Barb’s past, but without Barb’s last name, birthday, or any real details other than that she was a dead lesbian from the 1980s, it was hardly worth spending money on.

While she was working out the unfinished business, Kara thought she could at least try to make Barb invisible and quiet again. If Barb weren’t sleeping on her couch and eating all her food, Kara would have a lot more patience about the whole situation. She’d saved the herbs and candles they’d used the night they accidentally manifested Barb, so one evening when Barb was taking a shower, she decided to reverse the ritual.

Maybe it was reckless to assume that doing everything in the opposite order might make Barb invisible again, but these were desperate times.

First, Kara did the embarrassing throat-singing. Then she said the incantation backward, word by word, and put the ground herbs into a bowl in reverse order, making sure not to mess up the mugwort and the thyme. She placed the candles around the room in the same pattern Nisha had and lit them one by one. Then she waited.

After a minute or two, Barb came storming out of the bathroom, her hair still wet, and hollered, “What the hell did you do to me? I’m strobing like a disco!”

She was, indeed, blinking in and out of visibility.

Assuming she hadn’t done the incantation to its full effect, Kara recited it again, quickly, with Barb scrambling for the paper. When Kara finished, Barb had permanent stripes of invisibility.

“Are you happy now?” Barb yelled.

“Maybe if I read it one more time?”

“Give it up, kiddo. You don’t know what you’re doing.” Barb tried to blow out the smoking bowl of herbs, but she was missing the lower half of her jaw and couldn’t. She reached for the bowl, but she was missing half her fingers. She still had eyes, though, and they glowered at Kara. “I can’t believe you did this to me.”

She looked like some kind of ghost zebra.

“I thought we had a better relationship than this by now.”

“You won’t tell me your unfinished business,” Kara said. “You won’t tell me anything about you, so I can figure out your business on my own.

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