The Wizardry Consulted (Wiz, #4)(19)

Tomorrow, Wiz thought. I’ll worry about this tomorrow.

Actually there was a lot to worry about tomorrow, Wiz admitted to himself as he crawled into bed later that evening. He had to get things set up here so he could work, and he had to figure out a way to keep Dieter pacified. And he still didn’t have the faintest idea how he was going to solve the village’s dragon problem. That last was really beginning to gnaw at him.

Well, Wiz thought as he drifted off to sleep, it could be worse I suppose.

“Look at this mess!”

Wiz jerked bolt upright in bed.

“Look at it, I tell you,” the voice repeated.

Wiz looked around frantically, but the room was empty.

backslash light exe! he called out into the darkness. The room filled with the warm yellow glow of a magic globe, but there was still no sign of anyone else in the room.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to do anything about it, are you?” the voice rasped again. It was a particularly unpleasant voice. It reminded Wiz of a rusty door hinge or slowly pulling an old nail out of a piece of very hard wood.

“What are you carrying on about?” came another voice. Wiz whirled and saw Malkin in the doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“There’s someone in the room. I can hear her but I can’t see her.”

There was a loud snort from the corner.

“There,” Wiz said.

Malkin’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“It was a snort. A definite snort.”

“Are you sure you’ve been getting enough rest?”

“I tell you there’s someone here. It sounds like an old woman and she’s complaining that the house is dirty.”

“Well, look at this place!” the voice came again. “It’s a pigsty, an absolute pigsty! And what are you doing about it, I’d like to know? You’re sitting there in the dirt and not making a move to clean it up.”

“Probably Widder Hackett,” Malkin said judiciously. “I guess them as said the place was haunted was right.”

“You’re taking this awfully calmly.”

Malkin shrugged. “So far she’s not bothering me.”

“Why is it I can hear her and you can’t?”

“Because you’re the owner, dummy,” the old lady’s voice grated. “No one but the owner sees or hears the ghost. Them’s the rules.”

Suddenly things clicked. “When you died without heirs,” Wiz said into empty air, “who inherited this place?”

“Why, the council, of course,” the voice said. “Not that any of that pack of layabouts lifted a finger to keep my house up. Crooked as a dog’s hind leg, every last one of them, and don’t think I didn’t tell them so!”

Malkin was obviously only hearing half the exchange, but she kept swiveling her head from Wiz to the corner he was looking at, like the spectator at a ping-pong match.

“Which explains why they gave the place to me.”

“And what are you going to do about it?” the ghost demanded again.

“Well, this is all kind of new to me,” Wiz temporized. “We don’t have ghosts where I come from. Except on TV-and you can usually fix those by getting cable.”

The ghost of Widder Hackett ignored his sally. “A right uncivilized place, it sounds like. Well, we do things better here. And that means taking care of my house.”

Wiz thought about pointing out that death usually severs right of ownership. Then he decided it probably didn’t apply here.

“Look, it’s the middle of the night. I can’t do anything about it right now, can I? I promise you I’ll get started on it first thing in the morning.”

“I suppose that’s the best I can expect from someone like you. All right then, but first thing in the morning, mind.”

I couldn’t get a ghost that rattles chains or moans, Wiz thought as he tried to get comfortable again in his haunted house. I’ve got to get one that nags at 80 dB. I don’t suppose there are OSHA noise regulations for ghosts either.

Wiz finally drifted off to sleep while musing on the most effective kind of hearing protectors to use against ghost noises.

Wiz was having a wonderful dream, about a place with Moira and no dragons, when a rocket went off beside his head. He was bolt upright with the covers off before he realized that what he had heard was a voice and not a particularly violent explosion.

“Well?” came the voice again.

“Well what?” Wiz was not at his best early in the morning and one glance at the rosy hue of sunlight painted on the wall told him it was very early morning.

“Well, it’s morning,” said the voice in a particularly unpleasant tone.

“What are you going to do about the house?”

“Ah, the house. Right.” He realized he recognized the voice. He also realized he didn’t have any caffeine in the house. The third realization, less than thirty seconds later, was that this was not shaping up to be a good day.

True to his word of the night before he fixed breakfast for himself and Malkin. But Malkin apparently liked to sleep late as much as Wiz did and since she didn’t have a complaining ghost dogging her footsteps she could stay in bed. Wiz left a pot of oat porridge on the stove for her, put down a saucer of milk for Bobo after the cat jumped in his lap three times trying to get at his porridge and milk, left the dishes in the sink (over Widder Hackett’s strenuous objections) and dragged his way upstairs.