And it’s not a spirit.
Chapter
Four
“Your EMF meter isn’t on.” Mike side-eyes me as we make our way to the second level.
“Whoops.” I flash an innocent smile. It’s not on because I turned it off. I don’t need some device to tell me if a spirit is around. And right now, I’m not sensing anything strong. Usually, I can tell if a place is haunted the second I step foot inside. Ghosts can come and go, passing through places and buildings. And from my experience, there are two main types of hauntings: intelligent hauntings, where the ghosts can answer questions, do things to purposely hurt or scare you, and somewhat know that they are dead. The others are the distant echoes of what was left behind. These are the spirits seen wandering halls of haunted hotels. They don’t interact, don’t respond, and are nothing more than a stain of a memory.
I’ve come across ghosts that border more in the middle. They’re able to respond to simple questions but can’t give you more than a few “yes” or “no” replies. That’s the kind of haunting sought after for ghost tours, where there’s a chance you’ll capture orbs when you snap your camera, and you’ll walk into cold spots and get random spikes in EMF.
But there’s no danger. The spirits aren’t going to push you down a flight of stairs or claw you because you’re in their territory. And that’s exactly what I’m sensing here. Or, at least, it was when I first walked in. What I’m feeling now…it’s not a ghost.
“See anything?” Ethan asks quietly, slowing our pace so Mike goes up ahead.
“I saw a little girl, but she didn’t really respond.” I shove the EMF meter in my jacket pocket and hold out my hands, trying to get a better read on the energy. “There’s something…something off.” I close my eyes and let my mental shields completely drop. I can sense the little girl again. She’s walking down the hall, repeating the same loop over and over. The sound of glass breaking surrounds me, and someone tells me to hide. The last thing I remember seeing is a door being kicked open.
“Her father killed her and her mother in a rage. She fell asleep hiding under her bed and then he killed her and the mom,” I tell Ethan as it crashes down on me. I grab his arm for support, taking a slow, deep breath to keep from feeling sick. That happens sometimes when I get whacked right in the face with a backstory like this. “So there goes my theory of helping her move on if I could get in touch with the mother. Unless she’s here somewhere too.”
Ethan’s head moves up and down as he pulls his phone from his pocket, firing off a text to Julia, his adopted sister, so she can look up any incident of a child being murdered in this building.
“But this spirit isn’t strong,” I whisper, waiting until Mike steps into a room to continue. “She’s definitely not one to attack people. I don’t think she has the energy.”
“Do you sense any other spirits?”
“Oh, totally. And…and something else. And it’s not—” I cut off when Mike steps back into the hall, eyes stopping on Ethan for a moment, no doubt wondering why the famous demon-hunter Ethan Bailey is just standing in the hall instead of springing into action.
“I’m not getting anything,” he says, holding up his EMF meter. “Are you?”
“No.” Ethan glances at the EMF meter in his hand. “Though, if the spirits were provoked, we probably won’t get a reaction by walking through.”
“What do you suggest?”
Ethan looks around and spots a toolbox half covered with a plastic tarp. “Provoking them.” He pulls a hammer from the toolbox and swings. The hammer goes through the drywall, sending pieces of it raining down around him. He yanks the hammer out and hits it again, eyes shifting to me in question.
I shake my head, letting him know I don’t sense a shift in the energy yet. There are several spirits in the building, but none scream threat to me. Ethan stops and looks around the room. Things have been discarded as if the workers left in a hurry, though I’ve been in enough construction sites to know they’re not always the tidiest.
“Let’s find the elevator shaft,” he suggests and keeps a hold of the hammer. I get hit with raw energy the moment we step out of the room, and I turn my head, immediately looking at a door.
“There’s the office,” I say, knowing it leads into the old office. I’ve compared instantly knowing a ghost’s memories to downloading a file. Being a medium is more than just seeing ghosts and feeling their emotions. The random knowledge ghosts share is hard to explain.
Picking up the pace, I lead Ethan and Mike into the office and startle when a man who is none other than Dr. Hanover rushes at me. I turn my head as he passes through me, feeling like an electrically charged mist is hitting my skin.
“Whoa!” The EMF meter in Mike’s hands spikes and our flashlights start to flicker.
“He’s here.” I turn, trying to figure out where Dr. Hanover went. “It’s the doctor.”
“You’re sure?” Ethan sets the hammer down on a desk and pulls a canister of salt from his bag.
“Yeah. I read his name tag.”
“What do you mean?” Mike asks and I look at Ethan, who gives me an encouraging nod.
“I saw him. Just for a moment,” I add. “He, um, ran right at us.”
“Is he here now?” Mike pulls a wooden stake from inside his jacket. You can’t stab a ghost, buddy. He looks at me again, eyes wide. Right. He hasn’t been indoctrinated by the Order yet and might not know it’s frowned upon to be a medium, though I don’t see why. Not all mediums are witches, and when you’re in this line of work it comes in handy.
“I can feel him hanging around,” I say right as the EMF meter spikes again. Dr. Hanover materializes in front of us and grabs the hammer on the desk. Ethan is only feet from it and could have easily gotten whacked in the face. But the hammer drops at his feet.
Pushing his brows together, Ethan calmly bends over and picks it up, no doubt thinking the same thing I am. This ghost is trying to scare us, not hurt us.
Taking a step away from the ghost, the bad feeling grows stronger. I turn and make sure the ghost of Dr. Hanover is still standing by the desk—he is—and then take another few steps forward. I can feel the spirit trying to pull from my energy.
“Take it,” I whisper. “And then maybe you can tell me what you’re trying to do here.” I hold out my hand, feeling magic buzzing around my fingers. The spirit whooshes forward in a shadow of gray mist and I get hit with a sudden wave of exhaustion. Blinking, I watch Dr. Hanover materialize in front of us.
“The fuck,” Mike exclaims and drops the wooden stake. It’s then I realize it’s inlaid with some sort of metal—probably cold iron—which has long been believed to repel ghosts as well as witches.
“Wait,” Ethan tells him when Mike goes to pick up the stake. “It’s trying to tell us something.”
“Yeah, before it kills us!”
“No,” I counter and hold my hands out to the side, showing Dr. Hanover I mean no harm. He points to a wall, shakes his head, and then falls through the floor. I get a flash of a memory, and an overwhelming feeling to run like hell out of the building. Yet it’s not the ghosts I need to be afraid of.