Ghouls Gone Wild (30 page)

Before I could even fully register the text, Heath was tapping the screen and replying to Gil. “What’d you tell him?”

My companion wore a slightly wicked smile. “I told him it was no problem. I’ve got a king bed upstairs. Totally big enough for the both of us.”

Gulp
.

 

Heath lent me a pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt to wear to bed. I tried to resist the urge to sniff the shirt outright—which smelled just as good as Heath. I also had to hand it to him—he was nothing but a gentleman, offering me either side of the bed I preferred, and keeping to his half once I’d crawled under the covers.

The back of my thigh throbbed as the local anesthesia wore off, but the Vicodin didn’t allow me to dwell on it, and before long I was blissfully asleep.

Many hours later I woke up wrapped in strong, masculine arms. And bolted out of bed like a rocket. “Hey!” I yelped both from pain when I put weight on my right leg and from the shock of finding myself cuddled in Heath’s arm.

“What’s going on?” Heath mumbled, rolling over and burying his face in his pillow.

“You were groping me.”

Heath lifted his head, squinting at me sleepily. “Was not.”

“Then how do you explain how we woke up?” I snapped, completely flustered and desperate to find my jeans.

“
You
were groping
me
.”

“I was
not
!” I insisted.

Heath sighed and pushed up onto his elbows. “I’m still on my side of the bed,” he countered. “Which means you rolled over and tried to cop a feel.”

I felt heat sear my cheeks while I tried not to look at my appearance in the mirror over the dresser. My hair probably resembled a rat’s nest. And my breath probably stank. And I was sure I looked completely ridiculous in blue plaid boxers and a brown T-shirt. Why hadn’t I asked for something a little more matchymatchy last night?

Heath shook the small vial of pills next to his bed. “Need more Vicodin?”

Ah,
that’s
why.

“No thanks,” I said, locating my jeans, sweater, and shoes and clumsily gathering them all before quickly moving into the bathroom. “I’ll just get dressed in here and be out of your way.”

“Take your time,” Heath called. “There’s no rush.”

I got dressed in thirty seconds. Flat.

“Thanks again for letting me crash with you,” I said, coming out of the bath to grab my coat and purse.

Heath chuckled. “M. J.,” he said softly.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t bite, you know. Well, that is, unless you
want
me to.”

“Um. Okay.” I had no idea what to do with that. So I turned and bolted from the room.

I found Gopher just coming out of my room looking fresh as a daisy. “Hey, M. J.!” he said when he saw me. “How’s the leg?”

“Fine,” I said, distracted. “Is Gilley in there?”

“He’s in the shower. Might want to call up for more towels if you plan on taking one yourself, though.”

I scowled and used my key card to step into the room. Steam wafted out of the bathroom and I closed the door to give Gil a little privacy, then tried to do something with my appearance, but it was no use. I needed a bath.

“Hey!” Gil said, looking pink from his shower, when he saw me sitting on the bed watching television about ten minutes later. “How’s the leg?”

“It’s fine. You done in there?”

Gil looked behind him. “Yeah, but we’re short on towels.”

I sighed. “I’ll shake myself dry. I need a nice dose of cold water. Now.”

Gilley gave me an odd look when I passed him on the way to the bathroom and then he burst into a fit of giggles. “Someone’s in looooooove!” he sang.

“Shut. Up,” I snapped. But Gil ignored me and opened his mouth to say something else, so I slammed the door in his face. Two minutes later I was standing under the spout, trying really hard not to get my stitches wet and attempting to forget about Heath, which, as the shock of cold water splashed down on my head, was somewhat easier than I’d expected.

My respite was short-lived, however. When I finally came out of the bathroom, all three of my ghost-hunting team members were in the room. “There she is!” Gil sang when I appeared.

“Can’t a girl get some privacy?” I mumbled.

“Now that she’s here, will you fill me in?” Heath asked, and he looked a little impatient.

I wondered why until I saw the tangled mess of wires and plastic on the table and remembered the small radio thingie we found at the castle. “Oh, yeah,” I said, “you were going to let us know what you’d found.”

Gilley sat forward with a sparkle in his eye. “You have found a really amazing little gizmo, M. J. Do you know that?”

I sat on the bed next to Gopher. “No. But I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

Gil smiled winningly. “This little contraption is one heck of a device,” he began.

“What does it
do
, Gil?” I said impatiently. I wanted him to cut the theatrics and get to the point.

“I suspect it drives the ghosties wild,” Gil said plainly. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”

“What does that even mean?” Gopher asked.

“It means that this thing revs up the atmosphere to a degree and frequency that ignites the electromagnetic energy and charges both positive and negative ions to a superfrenzied state!”

“In English, please?” I begged.

Gilley tapped his chin thoughtfully, as if he was searching for the best way to explain. “You know how anytime it rains, we have good conditions for ghost hunting?”

“Yes,” I said. “The moisture helps the spooks travel around on our plane more easily.”

Gilley nodded. “It does,” he said. “So imagine if you could create an atmosphere that could not only make it easier for the spirit world to travel more easily among us but
merge
the two planes so that the spirit world was laying
right on top
of ours, making the two planes like one.”

I blinked, looked at the remnants of the gadget on the table, blinked again, and gasped. “You’re telling me that that little radio brings the spirit world right
into
ours?”

“Yes.”

“Can someone please explain this to me in laymen’s terms?” Gopher whined.

Heath seemed to be following because he said, “I think what Gilley is trying to tell us is that contraption creates an atmosphere which allows any ghost within hearing distance to easily interact with the world of the living.”

Gilley nodded smartly. “Exactly,” he said. “And it also supercharges them, allowing them not only to interact, but heightening their ability to affect physical objects. It would require very little energy for them to throw something or slam a door.”

“Or make a broomstick fly,” Heath said softly.

I looked sharply at him. “Oh . . . my . . . God!”

“Now we know how the witch became so powerful,” Gopher said.

“Yes,” Gil agreed. “When this little charmer gets turned on, it’s like giving a shot of steroids to a spook. It makes them superintense, superpowerful, and nearly unstoppable.”

I remembered the metal spikes and how they’d had little effect on the witch as long as the machine was on. “It altered the electromagnetic frequency,” I said. “That’s why when we uncapped the grenades, they only had a mild effect.”

Gilley looked thoughtfully at me. “The spikes didn’t work?”

I shook my head. “They only slowed them down a teeny bit, Gil.”

“Whoa,” he said, fiddling with one of the dials. “Cool!”

“And what about that speaker?” Gopher asked. “Remember? The box was hooked up to a speaker.”

Gilley stroked his chin. “It would have enhanced the range of the box,” he said.

“How far?” I asked.

“Depends on the size of the speaker, but I’d say at least a quarter mile. Plus, you should know that this puppy was on a timer. It was set up like an alarm, to turn on for two hours beginning at nine. Gopher told me that you had a hard time coping in the castle until you turned it off. I’m pretty sure it affected you just like it affected the ghosts. It would have pulled you out of the living world and more easily into the spirit world, and the effect would have been similar to when you have an OBE. You would have felt disoriented because your body would still be trying to hold you to the physical world, while your mind pulled you into the ghost’s realm.”

No one spoke for a few seconds and my mind went back to the footage we’d captured of Fergus’s tree and those three swinging corpses. I now knew they were spooks, brought to life by the box, which must have been able to reach the tree. “So someone is purposely trying to harm us,” I said, breaking the silence.

“And they’re using this gadget to enhance the witch’s power to do it,” Heath agreed.

“Do you think this thing is the only one out there?” I asked Gilley.

He frowned. “Probably not, toots. I mean, the gizmo was configured out of an old ham radio and spare parts. It’d be really easy to put together another one.” Something nudged at the edge of my memory, but Heath spoke to me and it flittered out of my mind.

“M. J., I don’t get why you felt the effect of the gadget so intensely and I didn’t.”

“You’d taken a Vicodin, remember? That must have grounded you pretty solidly.”

“I didn’t take a pain pill and I felt okay,” Gopher said.

“Yeah, but you’re not a medium,” I told him honestly. “Heath and I are affected by changes in electrostatic energy a lot more than the average Joe.”

“So what now?” Gopher asked. “I mean, where does this lead us?”

“Down another rabbit hole,” Heath replied with a sigh. “None of this stuff makes any sense! I mean, why would someone act so recklessly? That thing is really dangerous. You’d think someone would be concerned for their own safety being around that.”

I smiled ruefully. “Ah, but they weren’t around it, were they? They had plenty of time to set up the timer and get someplace safe before we walked into the party.”

“But who would be out to get us?” Gilley asked.

“Someone who knows we can talk to spooks,” I said, a tiny thought taking hold in my head. “And someone who must be afraid of having us around.”

Gopher asked, “So, which spook do you want to focus on?”

I looked at Heath, knowing he was thinking of Cameron, but that tiny thought at the back of mind had taken seed and I wanted to follow it. “Joseph Hill,” I said.

Gilley frowned. “Why him?”

“The gadget was found on his property, Gil. For all we know, he could have rigged it, set it on that timer, and gotten caught up in the heightened activity when the witch showed up. He could be more responsible for his own death than we’ve given him credit for.”

“Do we know for certain that he’s grounded?” Gil asked.

“No, but there’s an easy way to find out.”

“You want to go back to the tree,” Heath guessed.

“I do.”

Heath inhaled deeply, playing with the small vial of pills in his hand before pocketing them and saying, “Okay. I guess I can live with the pain. Let’s go see if Mr. Hill is interested in a little one-on-one time.”

 

We made it back out to Fergus’s and parked in front of his house. Heath rang the bell and I stood nervously behind him, keeping my eyes peeled for any spectral activity.

We’d had a short chat on the way over about how vulnerable that contraption from the castle made us. If we couldn’t use our grenades, there wasn’t much else in our arsenal that we could rely on should things turn ugly. About the best we could do would be to race back to the van and hope for the best.

“He’s not answering,” Heath said, ringing the buzzer again, which sounded like an angry hornet.

“Guess that means he won’t mind if we head out back and check out the tree.”

Heath nodded, but cautioned me by saying, “Let’s agree to make this as quick as possible. If Hill doesn’t show in fifteen minutes, we’re outta here.”

“Agreed,” I said, and we set out for the back of Fergus’s house.

In the daylight the tree didn’t look nearly so ominous. The rainstorm that had blanketed the area with wind, rain, and electricity was all gone and sunshine beamed through partly cloudy skies. The day felt, if not exactly warm, definitely pleasant.

“One thing about all of this is bothering me,” Heath said.

The corner of my mouth lifted. “Only one thing?”

Heath chuckled. “Okay, one in particular.”

“And that is?”

“Why the timer?” I looked at him curiously, not understanding what he was talking about right away. “Remember?” he asked. “The timer on the ghost enhancer. Why was it set for nine p.m.?”

“Obviously it was a trap,” I said.

Heath nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t really convinced. “But for who?”

“Whom.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Someone set it for us.”

“But who knew we would be at the castle at nine o’clock last night? I mean, we only decided to go there right before we left, right? It wasn’t like we called ahead and told people we were coming.”

“Who else could it have been set for?” I pressed. “I mean, you and I would have been the only two people around who would have been so adversely affected by something like that.”

By now we were close to the tree and Heath paused to look up at it. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”

I followed his gaze. The mighty oak was magnificent in the full light of day. “I wonder how old it is,” I said.

“Several hundred years, I would think.”

I edged closer to place a hand on the trunk. I love trees. I spent a lot of time as a little kid in the branches of one that grew right outside my parents’ bedroom window. I would climb up there when my mother was very sick and dying of cancer and I was kept from her because my father felt she needed her rest. He never believed she wouldn’t make it, and thought time spent alone and away from any form of distraction or noise would help her recover.