by E. E. Holmes
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By five o’clock that afternoon, Hannah, Finn and I were buried in the masses of a near-hysterical audience; we were now lined up outside the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in the heart of downtown Poughkeepsie. The building was the oldest continuously operating theater in New York. Its massive flashing gold marquee proclaimed the imminent arrival of “Lionel Freeman, Ghost Oracle.” Seriously, how freaking full of himself did this guy need to be to proclaim himself a “ghost oracle?”
Up and down the line, audience members were chattering excitedly; some were even crying with anticipation. Each and every one of these people was hoping to get a message from a spirit. Yet as far as I could see, not a single one of them was actually haunted.
“I pulled out my phone and texted Iggy. You in position?
Thankfully, before I could even stop to wonder how long it would take for him to respond, my phone buzzed with Iggy’s reply. Yep. Good to go.
I was relieved. Parking was always tricky in a downtown area; it was crucial to our plan that the team set themselves up on the corner nearest to the theater’s emergency exits. They’d disguised their van just for the occasion; today they were “local plumbers.”
“The team’s in position,” I announced.
“Right. Good then. But they should’ve reported to us, not the other way ‘round,” scoffed Finn, terribly unhelpfully. Did he think the whole world worked with the Caomhnóir’s military precision?
I ignored him and turned to Hannah. “I’m not getting anything, are you?” I murmured.
She shook her head. “There are spirits around, obviously, but not in line. The theater actually has a few resident spirits. Does this place have a reputation for being haunted?”
“If it does, I’m sure Freeman will capitalize on it. That might even be why he picked it for a venue,” I said. “How about you, Milo? Anything else?”
“Nope. I’m a lonely floater. There’s the ghost of a homeless woman, but she’s attached to the area, not the crowd. If Freeman is going to connect with a real spirit tonight, I am his one and only option at the moment.”
I nodded in satisfaction. Milo had just given me further confirmation—not that I needed any—of Freeman being a complete and utter phony.
My phone, which was clutched in my hand, began to vibrate. I looked down at the screen. It was Tia.
“Hey roomie! Miss me already?” I answered brightly.
“Yes, and I need you to come back right now. Please?” came Tia’s almost-hysterical reply.
“Wait, are you serious? What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Did you forget to do something before you left?” she asked shrilly.
I racked my brain. I’d packed everything we needed. I’d locked the door. I’d emptied the trash. I’d even left Skittles on Tia’s desk for study fuel. “No, I don’t think so,” I finally answered.
“Think harder, Jess,” she pressed. “Think really, really hard.”
“Tia, I have no idea what you’re tal—”
“I’m sending a picture to refresh your memory,” Tia said. She was so upset that her breaths were coming in gasps.
Bewildered, I looked down at my phone as her message appeared. I opened it and let the picture download. The image that appeared was of our living room, where every single item—from our sofa to the lamps to the pictures on the walls—had been overturned. The room looked as if it had been ransacked by robbers.
“Oh my God.” I gasped, as I looked up at Hannah and Finn in absolute horror. “We forgot to Ward the apartment before we left!”
“That’s correct!” Tia squealed. She was now so loud and tense that Hannah and Finn both heard her voice coming from the phone. I held the picture up for them; Hannah clapped her hand over her mouth.
“You said you’d tend to that after meeting with the team!” Finn said, in what I thought was an unfairly accusatory tone.
“I was going to—but we had a lot to review! Then we were rushing to get out the door, and… I forgot!” I put the phone back to my ear. “Ti, is there anywhere else you can stay tonight, until I can get back there and fix it? What about at Sam’s place?”
“At Sam’s? Overnight?” she cried, as though I had suggested she stay in a mausoleum in an abandoned graveyard instead of at her own boyfriend’s apartment. “I… I guess I could do that. Oh, but my mother will know, Jess, she’ll know!”
For the sake of her feelings, I held back my laugh. Tia was close with her parents, but their stringently Catholic views did cause some tension in her relationship with them. Her parents’ particular brand of overprotective love was one thing when Tia had first moved away to college, but c’mon, she was now an adult, and a med student at a prestigious Boston university. Plus, Tia was easily the most inherently responsible person I’d ever met. Apron strings, meet scissors.
“How, Tia? How will you mother know if you don’t tell her?”
“She just will! I can’t lie to her, Jess. She always knows! She’ll take one look at me and fly off the handle!”
“But that spirit will take one look at you and send all your stuff flying out the window! I think you just have to go for it and hope for the best,” I said.
Tia groaned. “Alright, alright! I’ll be at Sam’s until you get back. But don’t even think about asking me to come home until the Wards are up and there’s not a spirit within a mile of that apartment! Well, except for Milo, obviously,” she corrected herself.
“I promise. We’ll evict our spectral roommate as soon as we get in the door,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Tia. Seriously, I am. I’ll make it up to you.”
“There aren’t enough Skittles in the world, Jess!” Tia grumbled. She hung up without saying good-bye.
“I feel really bad,” I said, looking up at Finn and Hannah. “She’s really angry. I hope she’ll be okay.”
“She’ll be fine, she’s tougher than she looks,” Finn grumbled, bouncing up and down to keep warm. “What are we doing here now anyway? The show doesn’t start for two more hours. We had plenty of time to get the Wards up before leaving. Why did we have to come so early?”
“Because this is the most important part of the night!” I said, a bit too loudly. I lowered my voice before continuing. “This is when Freeman sends his spies out to get stories and details. They plant themselves in the line, acting like ticketholders, and start casually chatting with the audience members, or else just listen in on their conversations. Then they feed the info to Freeman through an earpiece during his show.”
Finn raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah, and that’s just the beginning!” I said, fighting to keep my anger from increasing my volume. “He uses his social media network to gather information, too. See over there?”
I pointed toward the front of the line, where a woman had just appeared wearing VIP access badges over a bright pink “Reconnecting with Lionel Freeman” T-shirt; she had a stack of at least ten more shirts in a big mesh tote bag. A man with a video camera followed her, filming everything.
“Share your reconnection story on Lionel’s fan page! Free T-shirts!” she called out to the crowd; instantly, people began practically falling over each other with eagerness. “And don’t forget to share your selfies on Twitter and Facebook. Hashtag, ‘ghostoracle!’”
Finn’s mouth fell open. “They let themselves be recorded? Voluntarily? For the Internet?”
“Yup. Then Freeman’s team pulls information from the videos and feeds that stuff to him too. It’s right out in the open for everyone to see, but no one realizes it.”
“Or if they do, they ignore it. It’s really easy to ignore hard evidence when you desperately need to believe in something,” Hannah said empathetically.
“Here, see for yourself.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket, opened up the Ghost Oracle Facebook page, and started scrolling through the posts. Photo after photo showed smiling fans at live events; each picture had a short but detailed caption describing why they were there an
d who they hoped to connect with. “God bless the Internet, right?”
I watched the storm clouds gather on Finn’s brow. “Absolutely vile,” he pronounced. For once, his churlish tone was actually appropriate.
“I know it is. That’s why we’re here early,” I said. “Identifying his shills may be key to disrupting the scam. Starting now.” And with that, I pulled Hannah and Finn in close, cheek-to-cheek. “Smile like you mean it!” I said.
I held my phone up as if we were taking a selfie, but actually kept the camera’s focus pointed outward so that I could take several shots of the woman with the VIP badge. She was now listening with an eager, yet somehow empathetic, expression to a sobbing woman who was pouring her heart out for the videographer. While clutching her new pink T-shirt, of course.
“Got it!” I said happily, releasing my grip on Hannah and Finn. I immediately texted the picture to Iggy.
“And now one more for real!” I said, pulling them in close again. Milo floated into the frame too, as if the camera could actually pick him up, and mugged his fiercest, super-sexy pose.
“Geez, Finn, look a little more excited, would you? This is to cover our tails!”
“Right. Sorry,” Finn said, while making a pathetic attempt at an excited face that made me snort with laughter. Hannah giggled too.
“Oh my God, stop Finn. You’re making it worse,” I said as I snapped the picture.
I quickly uploaded the photo to the Ghost Oracle Facebook page, and read aloud as I typed the caption.
Can’t believe we got Ghost Oracle tix! Need Nana Mamie’s advice. Take the internship 1,000 miles from home? Miss you every day, Mamie! Xoxo #ghostoracle #cancersucks.
I held up my phone to show Finn, Hannah, and Milo the post. “Now we look like we’re here for the same reason as everyone else. If it’s on the Internet, it must be true!”
Finn looked horrified at being included in a social media post. “Sharing” was against his Caomhnóir instincts. He shook his head ruefully and said, “Okay, then. What’s next?” For someone who had grumbled the whole way down here, he certainly seemed very interested in participating now that all this was really happening.
“Now we find Freeman’s plants,” I said, tucking the phone away.
“How are we supposed to do that? They’re blending in. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” Finn asked.
“Are you a Caomhnóir or not? Use your eyes, Finn. They’re wearing earpieces,” I said. “They might be really small ones, so they won’t be easy to spot. We need to split up. Look for anyone who seems to be eavesdropping on conversations, and for anyone wearing anything that looks like a Bluetooth.”
“And after we’ve finished peering into strangers’ ears what do we do? If we find a plant, then what?” Finn asked.
“Find a way to get a better look at that earpiece. If we can figure out exactly what kind of devices they’re using, Dan should be able to find a way to mess with them. We’ll meet up at the back of the line in fifteen minutes to check in.”
“Okay Jess, sounds like a plan,” said Hannah.
“And I’ll do my deadside thing!” added Milo.
“But how do we—” began Finn, but I was already pushing back through the crowd.
“Figure it out!” I called back to him. “You’ll think of something!”
I eased my way through the group, politely smiling and mumbling, “Excuse me. Sorry!” over and over again while watching for any signs of surveillance. At first, I only saw rabid Freeman fans. A group of women was taking a selfie with a life-size cutout of the grinning “oracle” himself. In the cutout, Freeman was dressed in his trademark black, Nerhu-collared suit. His face was almost elfin, with round cheeks, bright blue eyes, and ears that stuck out from his greasy slicked hair like satellite dishes searching for a signal from the afterlife. The Nerhu collar particularly enraged me—it was a transparent attempt to associate himself with mysticism and religious authority without actually being ordained in, or endorsed by, any religion at all. I had never been a religious person, but I did consider myself a moral one—and this guy was absolutely devoid of a moral compass.
I searched for several more frustrating minutes; the longer I investigated, the more my doubts got the better of my nerve. What if we couldn’t find the plants? What if our theory about how they communicated was wrong? Even if we did manage to find a spy, what if we couldn’t get enough information about their methods? Or, worse still, what if someone figured out what we were trying to do and we got caught? We’d never attempted anything this elaborate before, and I had to admit the size of the task was starting to intimidate me. Freeman was a machine, a powerhouse of publicity. He obviously had this all down to a science, while we were just amateurs winging it.
I had just about talked myself into giving up when I spotted her—a youngish woman with downcast eyes and her long dark hair pulled down around her face. She was leaning just a bit too casually against the wall, right next to a pair of middle-aged women who were gabbing loudly about their house being haunted by their older sister.
“She always hated anyone we brought home, right Kathy?” one of them said.
“Always,” Kathy agreed, nodding vigorously. “Always rolled her eyes at the dinner table when we talked about a boyfriend. She wouldn’t even come outside for a family picture when Gail here went to her prom.”
Gail sighed. “Maybe it was because she couldn’t get a date herself. Not that she wasn’t pretty, you understand, but she just didn’t know how to flirt, you know? So, last year, when I brought Tony to the house for the first time…”
I joined the group, gently nudging my way in until I was next to Freeman’s plant. I kept my eyes on Gail and Kathy, and nodded along with the rest of their audience while hoping that my face was convincingly awash with curiosity. The plant shifted closer in and, as she did so, I heard her quietly mutter, “Are you picking up all of that? She’d be great.”
“…and we were watching Wheel of Fortune when this light in the living room started flickering on and off, and I just knew. I knew she was trying to spoil my date—just like she did when she was alive. Because that light never acts up, does it, Kath? Only when Tony comes over…”
The plant looked up and pretended to be interested in the story. As she lifted her head, just before her hair swung forward, I saw it for a fleeting instant—a tiny flash of silver tucked inside her ear.
As carefully as I could, without attracting notice, I lowered my bag on its long strap until it rested on the ground, then tucked it against my feet. I felt around with my foot, found the strap, and wound it around my ankle. I listened for a few more seconds to Gail and Kathy’s story, steeling myself. I felt a surge of adrenaline as I prepared to make my move.
I took a deep breath and fell, as awkwardly as I possibly could, right into the unsuspecting plant. It marked one of the few moments in my life where I was awkward intentionally.
“Whoa! Shit!” I cried. I reached out as I lurched forward, grabbing the plant’s hair and taking her down with me.
She screamed. I yelled. Several other people were knocked off balance and almost fell with us. As we both tumbled to the ground, I heard something small and hard hit the pavement.
Bingo.
“Oh my Lord, I am so, so sorry! I just tripped over my bag!” I said. “Are you okay?” I asked, reaching down to tug the strap off of my foot.
“Yeah,” the woman said distractedly. Then, with her eyes widening, her hand flew to her now-empty ear.
“I’m such an idiot,” I babbled on. “Oh, no! What’s wrong? Did you lose an earring?”
“No, I… I was just… I had this…” the woman stammered, as she searched the ground frantically. Then she began fumbling through her hair, feeling down her shirt—searching anywhere that the earpiece might have fallen.
Everyone around us was offering to help us up, asking if we were okay. Even Kathy and Gail had stopped yammering on long enough to find out what all the commotion was about.
I spotted the earpiece lying in the shadow of my bag. Under the cover of the flurry, I picked up the earpiece and examined it. I had just spotted a tiny “Fuji TZ-90,” written on its side when the earpiece began emitting a piercing feedback squeal.
“Is this what you’re looking for?” I asked, holding it out to the plant.
“Give me that!” She reached out and snatched the earpiece from my hand, closing her fingers tightly around it to deaden the noise. Everyone was staring at her now, curious about the sound.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again. “I know those hearing aids are expensive. My uncle used to have them. It’s not broken, is it?”
Some of the blind panic left the woman’s eyes as I handed her the perfect cover story for what she now held in her hand. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she managed to smile at me. “No. No, it’s fine. It does that sometimes. Excuse me.”
She ducked out of the crowd and walked quickly to the head of the line, before popping around the corner of the theater and out of sight. After assuring a few more concerned bystanders that I wasn’t hurt, I too slipped out of line and jogged along until I found Hannah and Finn at the very back of the crowd.
“Milo is still looking, but I couldn’t find anyone,” Hannah said anxiously as we huddled together.
“I’m fairly certain I did, but he left before I could get close to enough to spot his earpiece. I took a picture of him with my mobile, but it came out rather blurry,” Finn said, pulling the phone from his jacket pocket. “I can show you, if you…” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You look disheveled. What’s happened?”
I quickly told them the whole story as I pulled my phone out and began dialing Iggy.
“You did what, sorry?” Finn asked, gaping at me. I shushed him as Iggy picked up his phone.
“What’s shakin’ ghost girl?” he said as he picked up. Iggy had tried to stick me with that nickname the first time we’d met, but only Pierce ever got away with calling me that.
“Still not answering to that,” I said. Iggy laughed raucously. I could hear Oscar shushing him in the background.