The restaurant was thankfully nearby, and I parked with a sigh of relief. I stepped out of the car and found all three men hanging out at the bench in front of the brightly-colored building. Brandon spotted me first and gave me a wave. I waved a little shyly back.
“The smells from this place are killing me,” Donovan said as I walked toward them. He took in a deep breath to illustrate, sighing in pleasure. “I feel like I’ll gain about five pounds from the smell alone.”
“You’re likely not wrong.” I handed him the rock salt with a smile. “That should cover you for the next few days.”
“You’re a saint, Mack. Thanks.” The rock salt went immediately into one of his cargo pockets.
“Let’s go in.” I pushed the door open and waved them through.
El Mojito was a good place, run by a large family who’d immigrated from Mexico decades ago. They could really, really cook. How they’d ended up in Eureka Springs of all places, I had no idea, but I was thankful for it. The hostess—I think she was the eldest daughter—showed us to a table, which I thought was a good call. Brandon and Donovan were not the types to fit well in a booth. We were handed menus, and we placed our drink orders. I requested a Mexican Coke with a glass of ice, as usual. Since I came here regularly, they were used to me and my ways, and she didn’t bat an eye.
Brandon listened with interest. “Is a Mexican Coke somehow different?”
He would ask that. Well, he’d likely pick up on my faults sooner rather than later, anyway. “Yeah, they don’t use corn syrup as a sweetener. Mexican soda is made with cane sugar. I’m allergic to corn, so I can only have their type of sodas.”
Jon, for some reason, stared at me in a dissecting manner. “Not just corn, I see.”
I blinked at him. “You can read that?”
“Sort of. I can read that there’s a few other things not quite right. One of them is causing havoc in your gut at the moment.”
Damn. His eyes were good. No wonder he fried electronics. “Yeah, I can’t do dairy or coffee, either.”
All three men shuddered in pity.
I rolled my eyes. “Coffee is actually not that much of a loss, you addicts. I always get that reaction from people. It’s dairy and corn that’s in everything and makes my life difficult. Corn especially. America’s really bad about putting corn into stuff.”
“And here you sit in a Mexican restaurant,” Brandon observed. He watched me carefully, almost as if I held the possible answer to a question.
“It’s not that difficult to maneuver around the menu. I can actually have three or four different things. Some restaurants, I’m relegated to just salads.” I shrugged; allergies were a part of life. I did cheat with dairy sometimes, because cheese. Everything else, though, no way in hell. Corn laid me out flat for three days and made me feel like I had the flu. Coffee wasn’t even tempting.
Our waitress came back with drinks and to take our orders, which we placed. No one was surprised when I ordered fajitas with no cheese, tortillas, or sour cream. With the orders on their way to the kitchen, I felt like we needed to switch topics. “So! How much do you know about Eureka Springs?”
“It’s too haunted,” Donovan answered promptly and with a sour expression on his face.
I kind of had to agree with him there. “Do you know why?”
“I do, but I didn’t think to tell them,” Brandon admitted. “Don’s not fond of ghost stories.”
Jon was dialed in, at least, his interest obvious. “Tell me.”
“So, the hotel was built in 1886, but it changed hands several times. In 1937, it was bought by a man named Norman G. Baker. He turned it into a hospital and health resort. Here’s the kicker—he wasn’t a doctor.”
Donovan groaned. “I see where this is going already.”
I shrugged because he was likely right. “Baker was a millionaire and radio personality, so he had a lot of followers. He’d not had any medical training, but people listened to him. He claimed he had discovered a cure for various ailments, and because he was also an inventor, they believed him. One of the things he claimed to cure was cancer. Turned out his only cure for cancer was drinking the spring’s natural water and soaking in the spa.”
Everyone at the table winced, even Brandon. He hadn’t known that much, huh. “I’m not sure what his death toll was. He treated thousands of desperate patients, and at least several hundred died at the hotel. The basement was their morgue, and he was known for doing autopsies on them down there—and sometimes keeping the body parts for study.”
Donovan shuddered from head to toe. “Stop, stop.”
He really wasn’t good with horror, was he? Remembering what it was like to be young and defenseless, surrounded by spirits, I couldn’t help but be sympathetic. It was hard to fight something ethereal. “Just stay out of the basement and the second floor and you’ll be fine. That’s where the ghosts mostly congregate.”
“Why the second floor?” Jon asked curiously.
“Baker’s office was located there.”
“Basement and second floor. Got it.” Donovan gave me a hopeful look. “And how long will it take to do your thing?”
“Ah, depends. Usually it’s a few minutes. Sometimes we hit unexpected resistance, and then it takes a little longer. Mostly, we have to set up a lighted path and…uh. Not sure how to explain this. Basically, I have to open a pathway for her and then sort of coax her down it. Emma will pass on her own once I get her in motion.”
“But we’re here for three days at least with the ghost hunting crew,” Brandon reminded his brother. He likely meant to sound sympathetic, but it came off as excited.
Donovan rolled his eyes. “You just had to agree to that.”
“I love how you’re placing the blame on me and not Jon.”
“Jon agreed because you agreed,” Donovan shot back.
Jon snickered. “Actually, I probably would have been interested regardless. But it does help that Brandon’s on board too.”
Donovan acted good-naturedly about being dragged into something he obviously wasn’t comfortable with. Even these complaints were half-teasing. I thought about what it must be like to love someone enough to go into a situation you weren’t comfortable with just because they asked you to. Damn, okay, now I was jealous.
The dinner stayed lively and fun. An hour passed in the blink of an eye, and absolutely no scrap of food left the table intact. The Havili brothers could apparently pack it away. At one point, Donovan left for a bathroom break, and Brandon went to settle the bill, saying something about this all being an FBI training expense. It left me alone at the table for a few minutes with Jon.
Clear blue eyes settled on me, and it was almost instinctively unnerving how penetrating those eyes felt. I had no secrets from this man. I suddenly, intuitively understood that.
“Mack,” Jon said calmly. “Two things you need to understand before we progress any further. First, I’m not a tattletale. I won’t spill your secrets.”
I held my breath, staring right back at him. I saw his sincerity and decided to trust him and take those words at face value. Slowly, I let out the breath I was holding. “Okay. Thanks, that is reassuring.”