“Just keep your distance and don’t get in our way.” There was a hint of growl in Cody’s voice. “Daise?”

“Hammer or lantern?” I asked him in response, gesturing with my full arms. “I can’t do both.”

He extended one hand. “Hammer. The last time I touched something Hel gave you, I got frostbite.”

Stacey raised the video camera. “What exactly are you doing?”

“Ghostbusting,” I said shortly. “And will you please get the fuck out of our way, Stacey!”

She did, but she trailed after us. Our footsteps boomed on the metal ramp that provided access to the Osikayas from the dock. Inside the ship, we could hear shrieks and more gabbling voices coming from the ballroom on the upper deck.

In case I haven’t made it clear, the SS Osikayas is a seriously big ship. Think Titanic on a slightly smaller scale and without the tragic ending. Back in her heyday, she was a passenger steamship on the Great Lakes. She had more than a hundred staterooms, some of them with private baths, which was pretty impressive for the time. Some of the original furnishings are long gone, but structural elements like the gleaming mahogany grand staircase with its gilded balustrade remain.

I followed Cody up the staircase and along the state deck toward the ballroom—or at least I did until Cody froze.

“What?” Stacey said behind me. “What is it?”

I ignored her.

The ghost was blocking the entrance to the dining hall and ballroom, trapping the remainder of the wedding party inside—and make no mistake, it was a ghost. A ghost bride, straight out of a Tim Burton movie. She wasn’t entirely transparent, but she wasn’t opaque, either. Her misty figure hovered a few inches above the floor, her head canted to one side at an unnatural angle, her feet dangling in ivory-colored satin pumps.

Cody and I exchanged a glance. “Right,” I said, and took the lead, hoisting the spirit lantern.

The ghost in the doorway turned, creating an eddy of cold air that smelled like rotting lilies.

I sucked in my breath and promptly gagged on the scent. There was a long tulle bridal veil knotted around the apparition’s neck. Her face was dark and mottled. Her eyes bulged in their sockets, the whites laced with a patchwork of broken blood vessels, and her tongue protruded from her lips, swollen and blue.

“’Ere’th my huthband?” the ghost bride asked me, forcing out the words with difficulty. She held out her arms in a pleading gesture. “’Ave oo theen my huthband?”

Ew. And yet I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Something very, very bad must have happened on her wedding night.