Ghoul Interrupted (17 page)

She seemed to ask him a question and Heath nodded, patting her hand to reassure her; then he kissed her on the cheek and turned away.

Before coming back to us, he stopped to say something to Ari, pointing back to his mother. This time she nodded and he squeezed her hand before leaving her too. “We gotta go,” he said quietly when he stood in front of us again.

“Okay,” I said, wondering what the heck was going on. Gilley edged closer to me.

“Are we in trouble?” he asked Heath. “I mean, did we do something wrong?”

Heath’s whole face changed. “No, man,” he said to Gil. “Sorry. I’m just preoccupied with this demon thing. Let’s get back to the car and I’ll tell you what the firemen found.”

We got back into Heath’s vehicle and he started the engine, which was good because it was now dark and cold outside. “The fire captain showed me a section of the wall from the back of the house,” Heath explained. “He said that there was an entire panel back there that had weirdly escaped the fire, and the one thing that he couldn’t quite figure out was how there could be scorch marks dug so deep into the wood without it going up in flames along with the rest of the house.”

“Huh?” said Gil. “Dude, I’m not following you.”

Heath sighed and appeared to gather his thoughts. “At the back of the house where the kitchen sat, there was this section that Ray was working on to replace the wall because the old one had some water damage. There was no stucco on it; it was just bare wood. The section was maybe six feet by four feet, and according to the fire captain, it sustained no damage at all. It was like the wood had some sort of flame retardant on it, except for three long scorches shaped like claw marks running all the way down the side of that section. Those claw marks had been burned into the wood.”

The breath caught in my throat. “
That’s
what was on the section of wood the captain showed you?” I said. “Those talon marks looked like scorch marks from where we were standing.”

Heath nodded. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, and a shudder ran through his shoulders.

Gilley made another squeaking sound. “So we’re absolutely positive that the fire wasn’t started by faulty wiring?” he asked.

Heath shook his head. “That’s the other crazy thing. The captain said it was still too early in his investigation of the cause of the fire to say for sure, but one of his guys said that the fuse box looked to be the source. The captain said that what he and his guy had seen indicated it was probably an electrical overload, but the weird thing is that you don’t usually get that kind of overload unless a house gets struck by lightning.”

I looked up. The night was crystal clear and all the stars were out.

“So this demon we’re dealing with is capable of overloading fuse boxes and starting fires?” I asked.

Heath nodded. “We saw the same thing with the witch in Scotland.”

Gilley whimpered, and I knew he was missing his personal fire extinguisher. “Gilley Gilleshpie,” he whispered.

I felt a shudder trickle down my own spine as the memory of both the inn in Scotland that the witch had set ablaze and Heath’s home engulfed in flames came back to me. For several minutes no one said anything; we all just looked down and stared blankly at our laps. “How do you fight something like that?” Gilley finally asked. “I mean, the witch at least had once been human. But this thing . . .” His voice trailed off while he thought about it. “How do we fight a demon that’s pure evil?”

I looked up and found Heath and Gilley staring at me. Aw, hell. They wanted me to come up with the answer. “I don’t know,” I told them honestly. “But I think we need to start working on a plan of attack, and we need to come up with it soon.”

Heath nodded. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to work it out at Teeko’s place,” he said, turning to the wheel and putting the car in reverse. “We should go somewhere with more people.”

A sudden terrible thought occurred to me.
“Doc!”

Heath twisted his torso to look behind him while he backed up. “I know,” he said. “We’ll go to the house, get him and our stuff, and find a popular hotel with all the latest in fire-safety systems. We can talk through some game plans tonight.”

 

We found a package for Gilley on the front steps of Teeko’s lodge and Doc safe and sound, half-asleep and quite cranky about being woken up. “Booger butt,” he said moodily when I stuck my hand into his cage to retrieve him.

“I know, honey,” I cooed. “We just need to get you packed up for a road trip, okay?”

Meanwhile Gilley alternated between being ridiculously excited that his new iPad had arrived and charging around the house like a Tasmanian devil, throwing everything he could find that was his, mine, or Heath’s into an open suitcase and scuttling it to the front door. Then he found a small fire extinguisher under the sink, and continued to pack one-handed while he hugged the extinguisher tightly.

Heath went around and flipped on every single outside light he could find. I knew it likely wouldn’t keep the demon away if it was in the neighborhood, but the glow did ease my nerves a little.

“We have no spikes!” Gilley complained when he took in the contents of our things. “M. J., did you pack any in your messenger bag?”

“I have two grenades,” I told him, referring to the steel cases that housed the magnetic spikes we used to thwart off the nastier poltergeists.

“Two?”
Gilley shrieked. “How the hell are we supposed to do anything with just
two
?”

“Hey,” I said, motioning to Doc, who began fluttering on my hand. “Don’t upset the birdie.”

“Sorry,” Gil said, lowering his voice to a hissy whisper. “How the hell are we supposed to do anything with
two
?”

I glared at him. “You were in charge of bringing our equipment, Gil.”

He glared back. “You know the crew put all our stuff on the plane for L.A.,” he snapped. “Gopher and his stupid inventory checks for the network accountants. We have
nothing
to fight this thing with!” His voice was back up to shrieky again and I was losing patience.

“We can make more,” Heath said calmly, picking up Doc’s cage to carry it to the front door.

I put Doc on my shoulder and went to Mrs. Lujan’s room to pack her things too. “What’re we going to do with your mom’s stuff?” I asked when I’d finished and was wheeling her suitcase out to the front hallway with all the others.

I came up short at the door. Heath and Gilley were standing there with Sheriff Pena and his deputy. “M. J.,” Heath said, his voice a bit stiff. “This is Sheriff Pena and Deputy Cruz from the Pueblo.”

The sheriff tipped his hat. “Ma’am,” he said.

“Sheriff,” I replied. My eyes moved to Gilley, who was discreetly looking over the deputy, who was indeed a fine-looking man. “What brings you by?”

Doc fluffed his feathers and began to growl. He does that with strangers sometimes, and I had a feeling he didn’t like the lawmen’s hats.

Sheriff Pena said something, but Doc was starting to make too much noise. “Okay, okay,” I told him, and hurried back down the hall, taking him out of view of the lawmen. A moment later I heard the door close and Gilley came looking for me. “Are they gone?” I asked.

“No. They just moved outside to talk to Heath.”

“About what?”

“They wanted to ask him about the fire at his house,” Gil said.

“Why? I mean, Heath’s house is well off the Pueblo.”

“According to them,” Gilley informed me, “his uncle Milton’s cabin also burned down tonight.”

For a moment I was speechless. “Wait, what?”

“Around the time we were at dinner, Milton’s cabin caught fire.”

I thought of the surrounding woods and worried about the potential for a forest fire. “Is it out?”

“Yeah,” Gil said. “But they still want to talk to Heath about it. And get a look at the inside of his SUV.”

“Why’s that?”

Gilley shrugged. “Probably to see if he has any accel-erant or anything incriminating like that.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “They think
he
might be responsible?”

Gilley gave me a level look. “My guess is that they think one of us did it.”

“But we have an alibi, right?” I figured our waitress was bound to remember us after I’d barked at her to give us the check. Plus, Heath’s outburst when he’d learned his house was on fire had to be pretty memorable to all the patrons there.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure they’re going to make the rounds tonight, M. J., and check out our alibi, but I got the impression that they don’t like Heath or his mom so much, and that they like you and me even less.”

Gil and I heard the door again and we both walked out of the hallway to find Heath with a moody glint to his eye. “How’d it go?” Gil and I asked at the same time.

He scowled. “Pena can be a real asshole,” he snapped. “And Cruz is like his mini-me.”

“Cruz could mini-me anytime,” Gil cracked.

I couldn’t help it—I let out a laugh, but sobered quickly when Heath’s eyes cut to me. I cleared my throat and said, “Sorry.”

“Birdie go night-night?” Doc asked, fluffing his feathers again.

“Come on,” said Heath. “Let’s get the car packed and find a hotel.”

It took us an hour to drop off Mrs. Lujan’s luggage with Ari, who was taking her aunt in for the time being, and then to find a good hotel well away from the thick trees that could hide an eight-foot-tall, red-eyed, scaly-skinned demon. I wondered if AAA had a rating for that.

Heath picked the place; it was called the St. Francis, and the minute we pulled up to it, I knew why he liked it—the thing was clearly haunted. “We’ll be hiding amongst the spooks,” I said to him. “Nice.”

“If anything nasty comes close to us, we’ll feel a spike in the paranormal activity around us and that should give us time to protect ourselves,” he said reasonably.

“Good thinking.”

“No!” Gilley said from the backseat. “
Bad
thinking, Heath! Very
bad
thinking!”

I sighed. “I’m sure nothing here will be too scary.”

Gilley continued to pout. “I miss my van!” he moaned, still hugging the fire extinguisher from Teeko’s lodge, which he’d “borrowed.”

I undid my seat belt and got out of the car. I didn’t have the energy to argue with him.

We got our two rooms and I let Gilley have Doc to help calm both their nerves. He took my bird into his room, got him settled, then came back into ours because, according to Gil, it was still early. (The clock read ten p.m.) He then promptly used our phone to order up some room service. I didn’t utter a single protest because we did still need to think through a plan, and the food would give us at least ten whole minutes of peace while Gil stuffed his piehole.

Once his burger, fries, and milk shake arrived, the three of us got down to talking through our options. First, we looked at our arsenal, which was woefully lacking. We had only one working electromagnetic meter—we’d lost all the other ones in Europe—and we had only my two magnetic spikes, the others having been taken by our production staff with them when they went back to L.A.

“We’re pathetically low on good ghostbusting equipment,” Gilley grumbled in between fries, while he also connected a wireless keyboard to his new iPad.

“Can we put you in charge of making more, Gil?” Heath asked.

Gil shrugged noncommittally. “I guess,” he said. “But who’s going to pay for it?”

Heath blanched, I knew he was thinking of all the expenses he’d incurred coming here, and now with his house up in flames, he was out some serious cash until the insurance check came in.

My finances weren’t much better. I’d used much of my paycheck to pay a bunch of bills and I knew I had to be conservative until we got back to a regular shooting schedule.

Still, Heath said, “I’ll pay. Gil, can you get us any equipment you think we absolutely must have on this bust? But try to keep it reasonable.”

Gilley set down his milk shake and began typing. “Here’s a night-vision camera for a grand,” he said. “And I think I can get some electrostatic meters for about four hundred a piece. Then there’s the monitoring equipment,” he added, typing even more furiously.

“We don’t need a night-vision camera,” I said quickly. Left to his own devices, Gilley was likely to order an entire Best Buy. “And we’ll only need one electrostatic meter and some more spikes. The monitoring equipment we can also go without. Bare bones, Gil.”

My best friend frowned but tapped away anyway. “Here’s a used electrostatic meter for three hundred,” he said, turning up his lip in distaste at having to buy used.

“Sold,” I told him, offering him my credit card, which he waved away.

“I know the numbers by heart,” he said, typing in the sequence with amazing speed.

Heath reached out and squeezed my hand. “Thanks, babe,” he said, “but this is my problem, and I should pay for it.” Reaching into his own pocket, he pulled out his credit card and handed that to Gil.

Gilley’s brow rose, but he took the card and typed in the digits, then hit ENTER with a flourish and said, “Let’s hope it works when it gets here.”

Once Gil had ordered an entire box of powerful magnets and aluminum tubes to carry our spikes in, Heath said, “Now, let’s get down to brass tacks about this demon.”

I leaned forward. “Other than the story your mom told us this morning, Heath, do you know anything else that might help us figure out what we’re dealing with?”

He rubbed his chin before answering. “I heard the legend as a kid,” he said. “My grandfather told it to us, but we all thought it was a story invented to keep us little kids from wandering around at night and getting into trouble. After about the age of eight I outgrew any thought that the legend was true.”

“Well, now we know it’s definitely true, and it’s specifically targeting you, just like your grandfather told me in my dream the night Ari called you about Milton.”