Ashford's Ghost: A Livi Talbot Novel

By Skyla Dawn Cameron

Also available in HAUNTINGS: TWO TALES OF THE PARANORMAL

Four months ago, Livi Talbot successfully killed the afreet who abducted her family and tried to murder her. Then she took over his villa and made it her base of operations/home, as any respectable treasure hunter in need of better digs is wont to do.

But this house is haunted, and she's starting to think the ancient murderer she used the Seal of Solomon to destroy might not be entirely dead after all. Isolated in the house by a violent snowstorm, Livi is trapped with a dark force gathering strength by the hour, threatening not only the safety of her family but possibly her very sanity.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyla Dawn Cameron
• Release date: Oct 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781927966228

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Ashford’s Ghost

A Livi Talbot Novella

Skyla Dawn Cameron

❇

Four months ago, Livi Talbot successfully killed the afreet who abducted her family and tried to murder her. Then she took over his villa and made it her base of operations/home, as any respectable treasure hunter in need of better digs is wont to do.

But this house is haunted, and she’s starting to think the ancient murderer she used the Seal of Solomon to destroy might not be entirely dead after all. Isolated in the house by a violent snowstorm, Livi is trapped with a dark force gathering strength by the hour, threatening not only the safety of her family but possibly her very sanity.

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Genre: Urban Fantasy/Action & Adventure

Note: While some books contain romantic elements (some more than others), this is not Paranormal Romance and does not follow PNR genre conventions.

For a list of content/trigger warnings if needed, head here.

The Livi Talbot Series

LIVI TALBOT (Series in Progress)

Solomon’s Seal

Odin’s Spear

Ashford’s Ghost (novella)

Emperor’s Tomb

First Dates the End Badly: King’s Bounty (novella)

Shiva’s Bow

Yampellec’s Idol

Charon’s Gold

Untitled Final Seventh Book (projected late 2024 or 2025)

Copyright © 2017 by Skyla Dawn Cameron

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Previously Published in Hauntings: Two Tales of the Paranormal

Cover Art © 2017 by Skyla Dawn Cameron

October 2017

eBook ISBN: 978-1-927966-22-8

Print ISBN: 978-1-927966-23-5

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this or any copyrighted work is illegal. Authors are paid on a per-purchase basis. Any use of this file beyond the rights stated above constitutes theft of the author’s earnings. File sharing is an international crime, prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice Division of Cyber Crimes, in partnership with Interpol. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is punishable by seizure of computers, up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 per reported instance.  Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material.

If you obtained this book legally, you have my deepest gratitude for the support of my livelihood.

If you did not obtain this book legally, you are responsible when there are no future books. Please do not copy or distribute my work without my consent.

For the haunted.

The lawn

Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return

Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn,

The sad intangible who grieve and yearn...

T.S. Eliot, To Walter de la Mare

❇

Three thousand years of confinement is akin to death.

Musa ibn Sakhr to Livi Talbot, Solomon’s Seal

1

Getting Hot in Here

I woke at 2:37 a.m. from a dreamless sleep to my daughter staring at me in the dark.

This was not entirely unusual; she used to do the same thing when she was around three and four years old after worming her way past the guard on her bed. She’d creep into my room, stand right beside my bed, and stare at me until I woke up startled and let her crawl in with me.

But now she was six and a half, and she hadn’t done that in years, so I was not expecting it when I blinked my eyes open in the darkness and found her peering down at me.

My heartrate jumped and I scrambled up, tired brain trying to swiftly put pieces into place before I realized I didn’t, in fact, know precisely what was going on. Buttercup?

There’s a man in my room.

I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. What?

There’s a man in my room.

Motherfucker. I’d definitely heard her right.

I shifted out of bed immediately, adrenaline kicking in. There was a slight twinge in my leg as I stood straight; after getting caught in that cave-in last October the bones were now healed, my physical therapist was pleased with my recovery, but I didn’t quite trust it yet.

I hit the bedside light and the room warmed with a soft glow. No sign of anyone—I didn’t have a lot of furniture, and both the walk-in closet and bathroom doors were open to reveal no one else was present.

So I listened. This house was never entirely silent—it was too big, for one thing. The villa we’d been living in for nearly three months now was full of huge rooms and drafty hallways. While we lacked the noise of a busy city around us—we sat on about twenty acres of land out in the country—even in the deepest parts of the villa, there was the creak of the house settling or wind howling against a window. But even now, I heard nothing out of the ordinary, just Em’s quiet breathing and my own pulse beating in my ears.

With a young child in the house, I was very particular about my guns. In addition to teaching her a healthy respect, I’d installed a wall-mounted, sealed and locked cabinet. Right now, it only housed my two matching pistols and my backup Taurus 605 along with ammunition for both; eventually I figured I’d expand my collection, so there was room.

I tapped in the six-digit code and unlatched the left door, and grabbed one of my HK USP Match pistols. Checked the magazine—it was loaded, one in the chamber as well—and snapped the door shut.

I glanced down at Em. I could send her down with Pru, but at least no one was in my bedroom, so she’d be safe here with me only next door. Stay. Lock the door behind me, okay?

She nodded. Her big, owlish eyes peered up at me from beneath dark bangs that needed a trim, and I hoped for a moment she might suddenly giggle and reveal this was all a big joke. I’d ground her, sure, but dear god I wanted this to be a joke.

She didn’t laugh. So I headed to the hall, took a breath, and eased closed the door behind me, cutting the light off but for the thread at my feet. I waited until I heard her click the lock behind me and my eyes slowly adjusted to the dark.

The hall was nearly black. It was a lengthy corridor with doors to bedrooms on either side, and no windows of its own. At the far end, the hall arched toward the front of the house and some natural moonlight filtered through, but I could barely make out anything. I closed my eyes, listened. I’ve been in enough situations to home in on the sounds a human makes that he’s barely aware of. Breathing, the shuffle of feet, whisper of clothing, the way the air shifts as a body moves through it.

I neither felt nor heard anything.

Gun gripped in my left hand, my right hand reached for the wall beside me and helped keep me oriented as I ghosted forward. My fingertips traced the wall, came to another doorframe. The solid wood of Emaleth’s bedroom door met me and I tried not to fumble too badly for the doorknob. The metal was cold to the touch and twisted silently beneath my grasp.

I kicked the door open and slapped the light switch, both hands coming to my gun and eyes blinking hard in the sudden brightness.

The room took shape as spots left my vision. It was three times the size of her old one, something I marveled at a little every time I looked in it. She had enough space for both her white canopy bed and dresser as a sleeping and dressing area, as well as a play area with a small low sofa and shelves of her books giving her a reading nook beneath one of the windows. The walls were deep burgundy, high ceiling with wide crown molding in off-white—I’d told her she could paint it, but she hadn’t settled on what she wanted yet. The room was strange but familiar all at once; three months in this house and I couldn’t quite get used to it.

What’s more, it was empty of any people but me.

I took three cautious steps into the room, both hands on the gun and the barrel pointed chest-high. I hadn’t seen her cat, a small tabby named Giles, but I wasn’t about to aim it down, get startled, and accidentally shoot the poor thing. Normally he was curled up on the end of her bed; now there was just her rumpled white sheets and a stuffed black Egyptian cat, and I hadn’t thought she’d brought Giles in my room with her either.

The adrenaline of being woken suddenly by my daughter and then pursuing the possibility of an intruder into her room hadn’t worn off—it still had me shockingly awake, like eight shots of espresso injected directly into my veins. The faint creak of the hardwood beneath my cold bare feet might as well have been a shriek, my own breathing a thundering noise. I was hyper aware of everything, gaze scanning every corner for movement or shadows. My long loose braid of dark hair swished against my back and I had a fleeting thought of wishing it was shorter so I didn’t feel like something was behind me in moments like this.

Gauzy curtains danced in the breeze and the room was frigid—it was late January, the dead of winter, and I couldn’t imagine Em opening a window. But had we left one unlocked, and someone used a ladder to get up here? The tip of my nose iced over and gooseflesh rippled along my bare arms.

I cautiously rounded the room, my back nearly against the wall as I physically checked everywhere for some sign of an intruder. No one behind the little couch and no one could fit beneath it, not even her cat. I swiftly crouched, her shifted blankets and the brightness of the overhead light giving me enough of a view beneath the bed to rule it out as a hiding spot, though she and I would be having a conversation later about some dirty snack plates under there.

This left the closet—a walk-in one, the single door shut at the moment—and the small three-piece bathroom tucked beside it. The door to the latter was open, showing the shower curtain pulled back and no sign of anyone lurking in the shadows.

She must’ve had a dream. Either that or in the moments it took her to wake me, someone could’ve left the room and gone elsewhere in the house. The villa was at least thirty-five thousand square feet, most of it blocked off so my hydro bills wouldn’t be impossible to pay this time of year—that meant a lot of searching if the intruder left.

I had completely crossed the room without encountering anything out of the ordinary, reaching the windows opposite the door where curtains still danced.

Except the window was closed.

I briefly set aside my vigilance, instead frowning as I elbowed open the curtain to check, gun still trained on the room though my finger wasn’t on the trigger. No sign