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pain. “Don’t laugh. It vibrates.”
    “Sorry. Sorry.” I moved back and found a way to sit again
and then, “I’m going to hold the rope so we don’t die in a mangled heap at the
bottom of this shaft and you’re going to get yourself all situated. In case we
die when we open this door. We don’t want you to die with your willy wagging free.”
    He snorted and I snickered and then someone said through the
dumbwaiter door, “Hello in there?”
    * * * * *
    She was dressed in layers of batik and tie-dye. Ropes and
ropes of beads hung round her neck. An ankh on one ear, a cross on the other.
Her makeup was elaborate and dramatic and she was beautiful in a flighty,
intense kind of way. She stepped back, holding my hand to help me out. Her eyes
darted around as nervously as mine.
    Sean climbed out but tied the dumbwaiter off in case we
needed it, I assumed.
    “Are you okay?” she said. “I heard groaning in there is
anyone hurt?”
    I felt my cheeks fire and I shook my head, averting my eyes.
Sean cleared his throat and then laughed softly. A stunted laugh, but a laugh.
That doof. The hot, sexy, really-good-at-sex-even-in-a-perilous-situation,
doof. I smacked him. “We’re fine,” he said.
    “I’m Roxy, Roxy Morton, and I’m a psychic medium.”
    I looked her up and down and blew out a sigh. There were
furtive sounds all around us. I could only assume that some people had tucked
themselves away in safe corners. I didn’t see the creepy black smoke, but that
didn’t mean it wasn’t coming for us. “Yeah, I can see that. And it’s a nice
costume and all but—”
    My eyes went to the door and she shook her head. “Sealed.
Forget about it. Psychically this place is tighter than a submarine. If you
didn’t get out immediately, you didn’t get out. And what I meant was, I am a
real psychic medium. As in, I can talk to dead folks. And this isn’t a
costume,” she said, softly, sounding hurt.
    Well, damn. “Oh, gosh, I’m…um…are you sure?”
    Roxy glared at me.
    “She’s under stress,” Sean said. “She doesn’t mean to
offend. Normally I’d ask you if you forgot your meds, but smoke just ate one of
the guests, so we’re going to operate under the theory that you’re not crazy.”
    She just stared at us and Tierney barreled on. “How many
people are in here? He was looking around and I saw him touch his belt as if he
expected to find a holster there. Damn it, no holster to speak of. Not that I
really thought a gun would be any good in this instance.
    Roxy rolled a long silver necklace around her finger and
someone screamed far off in the house. She dropped her voice, nervous but sure.
“A few got out. It…he got about six. He needs ten more. Sixteen souls,” she
said, as if that fucking helped us!
    “What does that mean?” I said really, really slowly so as
not to scream at her.
    “Nutshell?” Roxy asked.
    “God, yes, please!”
    “The spirit is a boy. The boy was left in the care of his
older sister often. She was sixteen. She would often neglect him, abuse her
power by being cruel to him and every once in a while, she’d hurt him. Hit him,
push him, that cruel stuff kids are capable of. Anyway, she was the last one in
the house every day. She’d come home from school and their mother would leave
for work. The father had left the family.”
    “My god, do we need the whole family history?” Sean
interjected, looking up when we heard a thump.
    Roxy looked up too and said, “If you want to fight it, you
have to understand it.”
    “Great,” I groaned. “Go on! Go on!” I snapped.
    She frowned at me and Sean put his hand to the small of my
back. It would probably be inappropriate to curl against him and start
whimpering, right?
    “Anyway. One day she was being mean, she pushed him. He
fell, broke his neck and died.”
    “Now he’s haunting us?”
    “Well, he’s in purgatory and he’s pissed. His sister lied
about his death and said he just fell. He feels he has no justice