Free Give Up the Ghost: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery by Juliet Blackwell Page A

walk, which now probably sat in the corner of some salvage yard or adorned some upscale urban garden, or had long ago been melted down at the scrap yard. Which was a depressing thought.
    The day was sunny and bright, not what one would think of the right weather for a haunting.
    And yet.
    The wind shifted suddenly, and I sensed the weathervane spinning wildly.
    The weathervane that didn’t exist. I
felt
it as much as heard it, the vibrations of its creaking and squeaking reverberating through the roof tiles. I turned to see where it would have once been.
    A man was glowering at me through the skylight window.

Chapter Eight
    T he person in the window appeared angry. Furious, actually.
    Apoplectic
, an old-fashioned word, came to mind next, and it took me a moment to realize why: The man was wearing a waistcoat over a brocade vest, and his florid cheeks sported thick muttonchops.
    And in his eyes was a rage that chilled me to the core.
    Dog went wild. Startled, I reached behind me to grab onto an eave and steady myself.
    When I looked back at the skylight, the angry visage was gone.
    In the old days, before I understood what I was seeing, I would have tried to explain away what I had just witnessed: It must have been a trick of light, strange reflections in the too-shiny glass. Surely it couldn’t have been what it looked like. Surely not an angry man out of time and place. Surely . . . not.
    And yet that was exactly what it was.
    Now that I was more experienced I didn’t waste time in denial. I yelled.
    “Hello?” I said, my voice sounding scratchy and weak.I cleared my throat and tried again, in a stronger voice this time. “
Hello?
Can you hear me?”
    Nothing. I approached the skylight slowly. I reached up to feel my grandmother’s ring, which hung around my neck, and took a moment to center myself.
    “Is anyone there? Do you want to speak to me? Do you . . . Do you have something to tell me?”
    I had learned through my classes and reading and ghost-busting friend Olivier that ghosts were humans who had passed on. They were no better or worse than anyone else, and they were frightening only because they were dead. Usually.
    Except I was willing to bet this guy had been frightening back when he was
alive
, too.
    Still, if he was hanging around this house he had a reason. And if he appeared to me here, in broad daylight, then he probably wanted—
needed
—to tell me what that reason was.
    The wind shifted again. This time the squeaking was so loud I wheeled around to look at the spot where the weathervane should be, wondering if the man would appear there.
    As I twisted I lost my footing on the steep tiles, slick with moisture off the sea, and lunged for the dormer eave.
    “Get back in here!”
the man bellowed.
    At least, I thought it was him. I could no longer see him, so I couldn’t be sure. But it was a man’s voice, gruff and low, which certainly seemed to suit him.
    I’m not good at following orders—just ask my dad. But this time I did as I was told.
    If I was going to deal with this ghost, best to do it where I wasn’t in danger of tumbling four stories to a messy death on a Pacific Heights sidewalk.
    The only flaw in this plan was that I had to go back in the way I’d come out: through the skylight, where I’d lastseen the man. What if he was still there, brows beetled, furious with me for going out on the roof?
    Or . . . perhaps he was only concerned for my welfare. Could that be?
    Taking another moment to slow my breathing, I rubbed the ring I wore around my neck, and summoned my courage.
    I heard another grumpy old man’s voice, this time in my head:
All you can do is get it done.
    My father, Bill Turner, retired general contractor and sage.
    I crawled back toward the skylight. Slowly, looking for the apparition.
    “Hello? I’m getting off the roof, just like you said. Okay? No fair scaring the crap out of me, deal?”
    But as I crawled through the skylight, I felt nothing. I smelled