Apollo's Ghost-Hunting Daughter

Chapter 1

"Sloane?" AJ's voice was tense, laced with doubt and urgency.

"Almost got it!" I promised, although my response was muffled.

I was stuck halfway in a crawlspace, feeling around for the Source of the rather unpleasent feeling of hatred that had been pressing down on my chest from the moment I entered the house. It was a doozy of a case, and the Type Two Specter that had been stirring around the house since sundown was not happy with our presence.

"Temp's dropping and Malaise is building," Ariana reported.

The crawlspace wasn't much wider than my slim shoulders. As team leader, I was still trying to piece together how I was saddled with the task of retrieving the Source. I tried to adjust my position ever so slightly, scooting a few more centimeters into the wall. My right arm was stretched as far is it could reach, my hand scrambling for anything. I brushed another rough beam, insulation rasped against the back of my gloved hand, cobwebs clung to the space between my fingers.

Then I touched the Source and cold lanced through my arm. My fingers closed around something. It was...coarse but stringing and fine. What was it? Clenching my teeth and steadying my stomach, I grasped a handful and pulled.

A vivid image formed in my head. A girl no more than eight or nine, sat on the ground playing with a doll. Her clothes were dated, at least one hundred years old. Raised voices escalated in the background. I couldn't discern any words, but I felt the anger building, and the fear. The girl was scared. Scared of her own family.

"Sloane!" AJ's raised voice snapped me out of the echo before it could come to fruition. Always in a hurry, he was.

"Got it! Prep a seal, Miles."

As I shimmied backward, a jolt of recognition lanced through me as my brain belatedly pieced together what I was tugging at: hair. An entire handful of hair. Instincts told me it was human, but there was only one way to find out. Dread welled up in my stomach as the worst-case scenario flashed through my mind. If I was holding human hair and it was still attached...

"Light! I need a light!"

I stopped pulling, just in case.

"Temp dropped," Ariana said again as I somehow shoved my hand out the narrow entrance to the crawlspace.

A pen torch was pressed into my palm and I contorted my arm, flexing my shoulder at an unnatural angle to fit my arm back through the tight opening in the wall. I actually held my breath as I switched on the torch and even let out a slight sigh of relief when the yellow-white light illuminated a rough-for-wear doll with shiny glass eyes and an almost too realistic face. Silver cobwebs and dust coated her hair and what remained of her dress. She only wore one shoe. Paint peeled from her face.

I grabbed the Source again, the chill creeping through my gloved fingers as I quickly scrambled back.

"She's forming!" Richard called, but not in an overwhelmed way. He phrased it as if the postman was delivering a parcel a day early. Spirits fed off fear and we knew better than to give them fuel.

Somehow, I managed to scoot back out of the crawlspace. Miles was crouched beside me, a silver net open and ready. I thrust the doll toward him, Miles wrapped it up tightly, and the temperature seemed to rise five whole degrees in the span of a second or two. Tension in my shoulders eased and I slumped back against the wall.

"What was it?" AJ asked, turning away from the center of the attic.

A few empty guilted picture frames leaned up against the sloped ceiling and between two support pillars was a mysterious old steamer trunk, coated in dust, with a stuck latch. Dust motes danced in the air, illuminated by a dim gas lantern that glinted off a circle of thick iron chains.