Ghouls Gone Wild (9 page)

“How do you know?” Gilley asked, his voice high and squeaky again.

“Because I know,” I said firmly. “Really, he’s fine.”

Heath nodded his head vigorously. “Phantom symptoms,” he agreed. “Really, Gil. It was just my body’s way of reacting to all that residual energy of those grounded spirits who died from the plague.”

Gilley still looked unsure, and I saw him reach into his pocket and pull out a small bottle of hand sanitizer. “Did M. J. have symptoms?” he asked.

That caught me by surprise; then I remembered the ibuprofen I’d taken earlier. I knew that certain pain meds actually worked to lower my antennae a little. I told Gil about taking the pain reliever and said, “It had to have been the meds, Gil. It lowered my sixth sense just enough where the energy of the plague only affected Heath.”

Gilley didn’t look convinced and continued to squirt hand sanitizer all over his hands, arms, neck, and face. Heath merely chuckled, Gopher started the van, and we pulled away from the scene.

We found an all-night café a bit later and once we’d been seated and placed our order, we got back to the discussion of Heath’s phantom illness. “I think M. J.’s right,” Heath said. “I think that there were so many grounded spirits down there who died of the plague that their symptoms manifested physically on me.”

“Can that actually happen?” Gopher asked.

“It can,” I told him. “For example, when I’m reading for a private client, the way many of their loved ones identify themselves to me is by causing a physical reaction.”

“Huh?” Gopher said, his brow furrowed.

I smiled, thinking about how to best explain it. “Say I’m doing a reading for you,” I said, mentally turning on my sixth sense and hoping the ibuprofen didn’t get too much in the way, “and I’m trying to pick up on your deceased relatives. The first clue they’ll give me about who they are is a physical sensation associated with their crossing. For example, I know that connected to you there was an older man, right above you, who is making my heart beat a little harder. At this very moment, I feel a slight acceleration of my heart, and I’m pretty sure this man is indicating he had an issue with his heart. There is also a younger female connected to this male who is making me feel a little off-kilter—like a sickness of some kind, and I think it’s related to something like cancer. I get the names Bill or William and Ellen or Helen.”

Gopher’s jaw dropped. “Whoa!” he whispered.

I smiled. “I want to say that the heart-issue guy was a father figure. . . .” I paused for a second as I felt out the female and was surprised when I realized that she must be Gopher’s sister. “Your sister died of cancer?”

Gopher nodded, his eyes wide and unblinking. “My older sister had leukemia. She died when I was seventeen. Within six months the strain of her death caused my dad to have a heart attack and he died on the operating table when they were doing the bypass surgery.”

I reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry, Gopher. I had no idea.”

“It was a tough year for the family.”

“Your dad is very proud of you,” I told him as the older man I’d brought through began to pat me gently on the back. “He also wants to know when you’re going to get around to making that movie.”

Gopher laughed, but there was moisture in his eyes. “He does, does he?” I nodded. Gopher saw that we were all waiting for him to explain what his father meant, so he elaborated. “I wrote this screenplay in college and I always wanted to try and get it made, but over the years the timing never felt right or I was busy with other projects.”

“Give it two years,” I told him, continuing to pass on the message from his dad, “and the project will be given the green light.”

Gopher beamed like I’d just told him he’d soon win the Lotto. “Thanks, M. J.”

“Sure,” I said, closing the connection and turning us back to the previous discussion. “So, Heath took on the physical attributes of the bubonic plague down in the close. That means that we’re dealing with some seriously intense energy, guys.”

“Do you think that if Heath had stayed down there longer that the symptoms could have physically caused him to die?” Gil asked.

I glanced at Heath and he shook his head. “I think that it went as far as it was going to,” he said. “At the very worst it would have just made me miserable for a while until my energy started to push back.”

Our food arrived and we all took a minute to dive into our breakfast, which was greasy and flavorful, just the way I liked it. “So let’s talk about these ghostly witches,” Gopher said after everyone had eaten a little.

“Scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” Heath admitted with a meaningful look at me. “I think they beat the serpent hands down.”

Several weeks prior, Heath and I had encountered an awful, demonic serpentlike spirit that had attacked us pretty regularly over the course of several days until we’d managed to contain it. Its portal exit—a dagger—was now bound by two pounds of magnets, and locked in an iron safe back at my office.

I didn’t know if Rigella and her crew were worse than that, but I knew I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of finding out.

“I never got a good look at them,” I said. “What’d they look like?”

Gilley shuddered. “They were like nothing I’ve ever seen, M. J. They were shadow spooks, no clear definition of features or anything detailed, but they sort of left a trail of black smoke when they were in motion.”

“Ectoplasm?” I asked.

Gil shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “But it was more than that—they sort of moved in this really menacing way. The lead spook was clearly on the hunt and knew exactly what we were up to. I kept getting the feeling like when she was in front of the camera, she was peering through it at
me
. I swear the temperature in the van dipped below normal.”

Gopher nodded vigorously. “You’re right, dude!” he said. “I felt it too.”

I took another bite of food and thought about what they were telling us. “Considering how creepy these things were, I really have to hand it to you, Gil, for coming to our rescue.” In my heart I knew how much courage Gilley would have had to muster to make his way down to us.

He beamed at me and puffed out his bulky sweatshirt. “I couldn’t very well leave you guys alone down there. You two were getting your asses kicked.”

Heath looked at me with a curious glint in his eye. “Actually, about thirty seconds before you showed up, M. J. managed to get a spike out of the canister and that stopped the attack.”

Heath mentioning that made me think back to that moment when I’d had the wind knocked out of me and I’d heard that voice coaxing me to breathe and get the lid off the grenade. “You know what, Heath?”

“What?”

“I believe your grandfather was the one who actually came to our rescue.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “I heard a voice telling me to take a breath and get it together, and it was the same voice that I’d heard from your grandfather in my OBE earlier this afternoon.”

“I still can’t get over the fact that you got physically injured during a dream,” Gopher told me. “I mean, that just freaks me out!”

When Gopher had taken one look at me at dinner, he’d demanded to know how I’d managed a split lip and a black eye, and I’d done my best to explain my out-of-body experience to him. He’d made me recite it all in front of the camera, of course, and he’d punctuated the story with plenty of breathy gasps and exclamations, which I assumed were solely to ratchet up the drama for the television-viewing audience.

“Speaking of freaked-out,” Gil said, “what’s the deal with Jake and Russ?”

Gopher swore and his face turned angry. “Those assholes,” he said. “They quit and refused to consider coming back. As far as I know, they’re booked on the first plane back to the States in the morning.”

“Are you going to get us some replacements?”

“I’ve already sent my administrative assistant back home a text. We’ve got to hire our crew from the union, so it may take a day or two to get some new guys out here.”

“That’ll give us time to find some added protection,” Heath said.

“What kind of protection?” Gopher asked.

I polished off the last bite of eggs and potatoes before answering him. “We’re thinking we may want to find some crystals or charms to wear while we’re in the close.”

Gopher looked skeptically at me. “You think wearing a piece of quartz will keep the evil spirits at bay?”

“It’s all about finding the right charm or crystal,” Heath told him. “You have to remember that, on the spiritual plane, thought drives everything. So if you can find the right crystal to absorb a powerful thought of protection, it can go a long way to protecting you from bad energies.”

“Sounds like a bunch of voodoo black magic to me.”

“It actually works on much the same principle,” I told him seriously. “Only, in black magic, the thoughts that the charms are absorbing are negative which is what can potentially make them harmful.”

Gilley gave me a quizzical look. “You believe in voodoo?”

I smiled. I had a reputation for being somewhat skeptical of outlandish claims of hexes and spells, so I could understand why he was calling me out. “To a degree,” I conceded. “I mean, I don’t think a charm exists that can take someone’s life, but I do believe that the right charm can call forth a good spirit or a bad. I mean, we saw that ourselves with the knife we’ve got locked up in our safe back in Boston.”

“Good point,” Gil said with a yawn and a sleepy glance toward the window, where the first hint of dawn was beginning to turn the black of night a smoky lavender. “Man, I’m beat.”

“Me too,” Heath said.

“Me three,” Gopher agreed.

“Okay, boys,” I said. “Let’s pay the check and get back to the inn for some shut-eye. We can go in search of charms and added protection later. I also want to do a little more research on Rigella and her back-story.”

“That’s mine,” Gil said, raising his hand. “I’ll do some digging later on today after I get some sleep.”

On that note, we laid some money on the table, and headed back to the inn. When I got to my room, I noticed a new message on my cell phone. It was from Steven. “Hello, M. J.,” he said, his voice a teensy bit terse. In the background I could hear someone paging a Dr. Williams. He must have been calling me from the hospital. “Can you call me, please? I have not heard from you since you landed in Scotland.”

I clicked off the voice mail and stared at the phone. I was exhausted, and didn’t really need the guilt trip. For the record I’d left him a message the minute I’d landed. So, technically,
I
hadn’t heard from
him
.

With a sigh I hit the speed dial and he answered on the third ring. “Hi,” he said warmly. “How’s the busting?”

I sighed tiredly. I wasn’t really in the mood to recap everything. “It’s going,” I said. “How’re you?”

“Fine. Busy. You know. They have me on double shifts right now.”

“Ah,” I said, struggling for something to say, but only an awkward silence filled the airwaves.

“How’s the weather over there?” he asked.

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers. Was this what our relationship had come down to? Talking about the weather? “Cold and damp. How about for you?”

“The same.” In the background I heard a page for Dr. Sable. He must still be at the hospital.

“That’s me,” he said. “I have to go.”

“Okay,” I said, relieved to have an excuse to end the conversation. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Bye,” he said, and hung up.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a long moment, just looking at my phone. He hadn’t even said, “Love you.” And I tried to think back to the last time either one of us had said that to the other, and I couldn’t remember. It hadn’t been recently, that’s for sure.

With a sigh I got up and set the phone on the charger, vowing to think about it later. All I wanted to do for the next few hours was sleep.

 

Later that afternoon, Gil, Heath, and I all gathered down in the sitting room to meet up with Kim and John, whom Gil had texted about finding us a shop in town that might specialize in crystals or charms used to thwart evil spirits. I knew also that Gopher had filled Kim and John in on what had happened in the close, so I was fairly confident that they knew what to look for.

“We found the perfect shop!” Kim sang happily.

I shivered a little in the pervasive damp chill that seemed to invade every nook and cranny of the drizzly Scottish village, and asked, “Where?”

“Miss Lancaster’s Crystal Emporium,” Kim said. “It’s located right here in the village, in fact. John and I have just come from there, and look!” Kim extended her hand and several very pretty varieties of quartz and agate sparkled in her hand. “Aren’t they gorgeous?”

I laughed. She was just so enthusiastic that I found her delightful. “They’re beautiful,” I agreed. “Can you take us there?”

John held up a set of car keys. “Whenever you guys are ready.”

It took less than five minutes to make our way to Miss Lancaster’s, and when we arrived, I could see that the place had real appeal. The exterior was exactly like what you would picture a quaint European shop should look like: almost like a gingerbread house with plenty of white trim, cute wooden shutters, and a bright blue door with a lovely floral wreath. There was even a picket fence surrounding a small rose garden.

“I love it,” I said as we walked through the gate and up the short walk.

“Wait until you see the inside,” Kim told me. I stepped through the door after her and came up short.

As an intuitive I’m acutely sensitive to crystals. When I hold one, especially one that’s large in size, I can feel it sort of vibrating or humming on the edges of my energy. It’s an incredibly cool sensation, and sometimes I’ll get near a particularly powerful crystal and feel like I’m floating up, up, and away. There are also crystals that pull me down, or ground me, and I might have the sensation of feeling heavy.