Page 1 of Hot Ghost Summer

one

A Very Bad Idea

Hollis

Another death.

I flick the switch on the kettle and stare out of the grimy window. Not that there’s anything to see. ExorSquad’s office is on the first floor of a south London side street, and god is this place a shithole.

I flatten my palms on the chipped countertop, fingertips turning white, and hang my head. An impromptu minute of silence for a fallen colleague.

Will they add Gary’s employee picture to the wall beside Ted’s desk? Probably not. Why would they? They didn’t for any of the others.

The others.

Too many. So many, in fact, that Gerald notified us of Gary’s death in the same email that confirmed delivery of a new order of winter uniforms.

A dark chuckle slips my control. ExorSquad is a joke of a company. Well, it would be if anything about their death-in-service rate was funny, or if I could bring myself to laugh off how little training they give their new recruits.

Tension floods my arms, and I straighten away from the counter to retrieve my canister of loose-leaf tea from the cupboard overhead. It’s almost empty; I have to tilt it to spoon some into the little mesh basket. I only make tea from this specific urn in memoriam. It’s a family tradition—how we honour our fallen.

The Nachtmann’s are spirit wardens, or ghost hunters, and have been since the seventeenth century when my ancestor’s life was saved by a shadow geist. For hundreds of years, we’ve studied, trained, and excelled in order to uphold the balance between the spirit realm and the land of the living. Throughout mainland Europe, we are the ruling authority on all things supernatural, but not here. Not in the British Isles. Not yet.

That’s why I’m here instead of there. As a direct descendant of the first matriarch, Maddie Nachtmann, I’m set to inherit the family business, but I don’t want to be an empty figurehead. I grew up through the ranks, completed the same training and faced the same risks as all our wardens and hunters, because to me, leadership is driven from the bottom. Success is carved through blood and sweat, and achievement through graft and honour. Qualities that ExorSquad’s owner, Gerald Pickett, is sorely lacking.

Where he put together an almost pointless spiral-bound handbook, I’m building a comprehensive online database. Where he spent five minutes copying and pasting from the internet, I’ve spent years gathering in-depth accounts—centuries, if my ancestor’s ghost-hunting journal is included in that tally. Where he made up the strange and obscure suggestions he passed down to staff seemingly on a whim, I live by the well-honed rules that have kept my family safe through the generations.

“It’s not for much longer,” I remind myself.

I only need a few more entries for my database, and then the Nachtmann Field Guide to Ghosts and Ghouls will be ready to promote us from an Alpine ghost-hunting dynasty to a global one. This is my legacy, and the reason I endure the bullshit that is working here.

My mouth curls into a sardonic smile at the memory of Oma’s face when, instead of signing my coronation papers ahead of my thirtieth birthday, I showed her my employment contract with ExorSquad.

But the truth is that this company is uniquely positioned to provide me with fast access to information on all kinds of paranormal activity without the need to step a single foot from my office. They send their Spirit Extraction Specialists to the furthest reaches of the British Isles to investigate the recent and unexplained surge in hauntings, and when they call in, I add their case information to my database.

“Ah, Hollis, good. I’ve been trying to catch you all morning, but we’ve been missing each other, it seems.” Ted’s stiff London accent sounds from the doorway behind me.

That he couldn’t pin me down until just now is not a coincidence.

I inhale through my nose and hold it for a three-count.

Ted waits me out.

When I turn, cup of tea in hand, our gazes lock.

His stressed brown eyes—likely only held in their sockets by the perpetually tense muscles that crinkle into deep creases at their edges—implore me. “We have a new starter today…”

I push past, noting the grinding of his molars as I do, and stride the short distance down the hallway to my office. Ted doesn’t need a new starter; he needs someone to remove that stick from his arse. Being so stressed this young can’t be good for him.

“Hollis, sir tasked me with—”

Closing my office door silences him.

Leaning against it, I sip my tea and allow the smooth taste to encourage my shoulders away from my ears. Better. Marginally.

My focus roams over the wooden racks that are screw-fixed to the wall opposite. Filled with sagging cardboard boxes that contain a wild array of items, from cleaning chemicals to stationery supplies, this cluttered and small office space is the only truly private room in the entire building.

“Office” is perhaps stretching the term beyond its generally accepted use, but if Oma knew her Prinz was toiling away in a broom cupboard, she’d have her contacts at the Austrian Embassy revoke my visa immediately. So, office it is.