“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just broke my boot heel, scraped my knee, and I think I may have sprained my nose.” I must have sounded just exasperated enough for him to take pity on me. At least, he tried not to laugh, though I could hear the suppressed snicker behind his words.
“Take your time. We’ll see you when you get here. Don’t rush it—we don’t want you showing up with a broken leg.”
“Thanks,” I murmured. I felt out of sorts in every which way. Wincing, I stood. Not only did my hip still ache from the day before, but now my knee hurt, along with my elbow and nose. I was on my way upstairs to my bathroom when I heard someone behind whispering behind me.
Are you all right, pumpkin?
Pumpkin? That’s what my mother had called me. But I decided to wait till I was at the top to react. The last thing I needed was to tumble down a flight of stairs. As I headed toward my bedroom, I paused.
“If that’s you, Mom, thanks. I’m all right. I just started off the day wrong. I’ll be okay. And if it is you, stick around, okay? If you can.”
There was no answer, but I thought I felt the brush of a hand on my head, like she had always patted me on the head when I was little. I smiled, then headed into my bedroom. The ghost—whoever it was—didn’t follow.
I stripped off my jeans and shirt and checked myself for injuries. I had a nasty bruise on my knee, along with a pretty vigorous scrape. I spread some antibiotic ointment on it, then covered it with a gauze bandage and taped it down. I also doctored a gash on my right palm, and a nasty scrape on my nose. It wasn’t deep enough to bleed, but it sure gave me the Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer effect. I could lead Santa’s sleigh through the storm without a problem for a while.
After making sure I was still in one piece, I rubbed some Ice-O-Therm on my hip, then dressed again, choosing another pair of jeans and a turtleneck sweater. I threaded my belt through the loops, found a pair of boots that had stacked, platform heels that were also rubber, nonskid, and then I headed back downstairs. Once again, I put on my jacket and grabbed my purse and pack. I’d stop at a coffee stand for my latte.
I made certain—again—that the stove was off, that all embers from the fire were dust, and then I headed out again. Yep, rock salt was on the list, all right.
By the time I got to work, I was half an hour late, but when I walked in, everybody just glanced up and waved. I headed over to Tad’s desk and sat down.
“I’m here. Thanks for cutting me some slack,” I said.
“Hey, this job has a learning curve to it, and we take into account life’s vagaries. Meeting!” Tad called out. “Table, now.”
We all moved to the main table and I shrugged off my coat, draping it over my chair and leaving my purse on my desk. I grabbed my tablet and digital recorder, along with a notepad and pen, and took a chair next to Hank.
“Did you hurt yourself this morning?” Caitlin asked. “Tad told us you fell off your porch or something.”
“Or something is more like it. I’m all right. I have a scraped knee and palm, and you can see my shiny nose adornment. But otherwise I’m okay. My hip aches, but that’s mostly due to yesterday’s monster mosh pit out at the asylum.”
I told everyone that Ari and Killian were going to join us before Tad called the meeting to order.
“All right, listen up. When we arrive on the premises, no going solo. If you go anywhere, take someone with you. The bathrooms are still working, although there’s no hot water, but the toilets and sinks work. Take tissue and soap.” He paused. “Except for the fact that January was attacked, and the dead bodies that seem to be piling up around this particular haunting, I wouldn’t be as worried as I am. But those are enough to spook me.”
Caitlin cleared her throat. “If Charles Crichton is right, then we’re dealing with a compound manifestation. I really question spending the night there.”
A look of exasperation crossed Tad’s face. “Yes, but what the hell are we supposed to do? Our client paid us good money to ascertain whether it’s safe for them to buy the property. We don’t do slipshod work.”
“We could just take out our equipment and hunt around for a while, then leave our cameras set up and—” Caitlin started to say but Hank cleared his throat, interrupting her.
“We can’t leave that equipment out there on its own. It’s expensive, and we’d be out fifty thousand dollars’ worth of equipment. We either have to stay with it, or bring it back with us.”
Tad let them discuss the point for a moment, then he rapped his knuckles on the table. “Enough. You both make valid points. All right, since I’m the one who has to make the final decision, we’re staying the night. Shawn and Dell are busy, and they can’t make it, but with January’s friends, we’ll have extra brawn and magic.” He paused, turning to me. “They have to sign an NDA, as well as a waiver releasing us from liability if something happens.”
“I’m sure they’ll understand. Let’s take the documents with us,” I said.
Caitlin sighed. “All right, we spend the night. Have we looked over the equipment to make certain it’s all working?”
Hank shook his head. “I thought we’d do that right after this meeting.”
“Can I watch?” I asked. “I’ve never used any ghost hunting equipment and I’d like to be conversant with it before we head out.”
Caitlin linked her arm with mine and drew me toward the storeroom. “Be my guest. I love talking about gadgets.”
As she opened the storage room door, I glanced back to find Tad staring at me, the look on his face unreadable. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but I hoped I could put up a good front and convince him he’d hired the right person for the job.
Thirty minutes later, I was more or less versed about paranormal gadgets and how they worked.
Witches relied on our trancework and senses, rather than on gadgets and whatsits. Then again, we also had our own props and gadgets—our wands and daggers, cauldrons and brooms and everything that made up a witch’s altar.
By the time Caitlin was done with me, I knew how to use several of the easier cameras, the FLIR, and the EMF reader. Some of the equipment was too complicated to teach me to use in what time we had before leaving, but at least by the time Caitlin was done with me, I knew enough so that I wouldn’t mess up the readings by turning the wrong knob or pressing the wrong button.
During that time, Hank seemed to warm up to me. He showed me how to hold some of the cameras, and he sorted through a pile of clean thermal underwear and found a pair that would fit me, along with an undershirt.
“We have extra sleeping bags, and we’ll be taking a battery-operated space heater to huddle around, but you might want to wear these. It’s going to be cold and we won’t be doing a lot of moving around.”
“Exactly what will we be doing?” I asked, accepting the warm leggings and shirt.
“We’ll go into that room where you got clobbered and set up there first. Tad and Caitlin will stay there while you and I head upstairs to do a brief observation run. The fact that you heard movement up there means either we have ourselves a squatter, or an animal made a nest up there, or…and this is the most likely, we have more ghostly activity. We need to know which one it is.”