“ ‘Creepy vibes’ aren’t a very reliable indication. But the history of activity in this location is so well documented, over such a long period of time, it’s difficult to ignore that kind of pedigree.”
“But do you think it’s haunted?” I tried again.
Tina interrupted. “You’re a bona fide, documented werewolf. Do you sense anything? You ought to have some kind of awareness or sensitivity. You tell us.”
So many things and creatures fell under the heading of paranormal, it wasn’t surprising that someone would blur the lines. Even someone who should have known better.
“I didn’t have any psychic abilities before becoming a werewolf, and I’m afraid I didn’t get any after. I’m just your garden-variety creature feature.”
Gary actually chuckled, which made me warm to him. He said, “You’re a werewolf who talks like a skeptic. That’s pretty ironic.”
I loved it when people made assumptions. “Oh, I believe in ghosts. Maybe not the rapping-on-tables, mists-in-the-night kind of ghosts. But I believe that something lives on and sticks around, if it has a good enough reason to.”
“Sounds like there’s a story behind that,” Jules said. “You have a location where we could go, try to get a few readings?”
“No, I don’t,” I said flatly. He was right—there was a story. But they didn’t need to know how I’d watched my best friend, T.J., die, and how one of the things that kept me going was believing he was still watching over me. Still, I wasn’t convinced any disembodied spirit would obligingly stamp an imprint on something as mundane as the light and sound of a camera or microphone.
Gary intervened. “We could talk more about this over dinner. You know a good place to eat?”
I couldn’t have hoped for a better opening. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Of course I took the gang to New Moon.
A semiprivate dining room in back gave us a little quiet.
“Why Denver?” I asked, while the staff brought out glasses of soda and water.
Gary said, “I’m hoping the show lasts long enough that we get to every major city eventually. Apart from that, Denver’s got some good stories. Some classic hauntings are here.”
“Have you found anything good yet?” I said.
“The Brown Palace,” Gary said.
Tina leaned forward. “There’s this story about a ghostly waiter in an old-fashioned uniform leaving the service elevator. We did a bunch of readings there. The EMF numbers were through the roof—”
“The trouble is,” Jules said, “it’s an elevator. Of course there’s going to be increased electrical activity.”
Tina continued, undaunted. “We got a recording of a baby crying. There’s been reports of a ghostly baby crying for years—”
“But we checked the guest register and there was a baby staying in the hotel that night. The sound could have carried,” Jules said.
Gary shrugged. “This is how it goes. As long as there’s a plausible, mundane explanation, we can’t call our findings conclusive.”
I said, “How do you deal with skeptics? When things like ghost photography have been pretty much debunked—”
Gary gathered himself, lacing his fingers on the table in front of him and taking a breath in preparation for a long speech. Tina rolled her eyes, like she’d heard this a thousand times. Jules smirked.
“There’s the supernatural, then there’s really the supernatural. There’s proof, then there’s proof. Once you’ve explained, discounted, and debunked every piece of evidence you possibly can—there’s still something there. Something that can’t be explained. That’s what we do. We go in, try to explain away everything about these phenomena we possibly can. Then we look at what’s left. That’s as close to proof as we’ll get. We’re scientists, not spiritualists.”
“‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,’” I quoted Arthur Conan Doyle.
“Sherlock Holmes. That’s right,” Gary said.
“You know Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies? He didn’t think it was possible for a couple of little girls to fool everyone with a cheap camera and paper cutouts.”
“You know the other side of that story, right?” said Jules. His British accent was regional, distinctive. From somewhere in London, maybe. “That the girls really saw fairies. They just couldn’t get anyone to believe them until they did up those photos. Funny, isn’t it?”
“You can ask for proof all you want,” Gary said. “But can you trust it once you have it? That’s the tough part. Especially where the paranormal is concerned. So much of it is taken on someone’s word.”
“At least until the day we can get a ghost to sit in front of the camera for an interview,” Tina said. They all made noises, huffs and groans, like this was a long-running joke. In fact, I remembered a scene on a past show: Tina pointing the camera at empty space, asking silly questions, And what made you decide to become a ghost? How’s the food? Any word from Elvis?
I decided the Paradox PI guys weren’t just the stars of a TV show—they were in earnest about their work, and I could take them seriously. We were on the same page, and I wanted to get them on my show more than ever.
“How’d you all get interested in this? Ghost hunting, paranormal investigation, whatever.”
Gary, it turned out, lost his brother when he was young. Since then, he’d been searching for some kind of hope, some evidence, that his life hadn’t simply ended. If I recalled correctly, Arthur Conan Doyle became obsessed with the paranormal when he lost his son. The same story playing out. Conan Doyle had turned to mediums and séances. Gary turned to science. Tina told a story of a ghostly encounter when she was a little girl, a young woman in antique clothing appearing in the attic of their old New England house. She was a believer through and through, but Gary’s methods appealed to her more than those of the table-rapping set.
“That, and I like trying to scare people,” she added with a grin. “It’s amazing: Someone can be the most hard-nosed skeptic in the world, but you tell them something’s definitely there, you can actually watch their hair turn white. It’s awesome.”
“Jules has the real credentials here,” Gary said. “He’s a fifth-generation member of the SPR—”
“Which is—”
Jules answered in a patient, humoring-toddlers voice. “Society for Psychical Research. The oldest and most respected group of its kind.”
“Except for maybe the Catholic Church,” Tina said.
“That’s different,” Gary said.
I leaned forward. “Slow down. What’s the Catholic Church have to do with paranormal investigation?”
Again, the humoring-toddlers voice, from Gary this time. “We hunt ghosts, they hunt demons.”
This conversation just went around the bend for me. But I’d sort of asked for it. I sat back and let it happen.
Jules said, “The society has always tried to bring scientific reasoning to bear on the subject of the supernatural. With varying degrees of success...”
“They believed the fairy photos, didn’t they?” I said.
“Only some of them,” he said, almost pouting.
“The society represents a lot of experience,” Gary said.
Tina, I noticed, had started staring off, distracted, through the French doors to the main area of the restaurant.
“Tina,” I said. She flinched a little, startled. “Are you okay?”
She looked at me, looked back through the door. Pursed her lips and furrowed her brow like she was trying to figure out a problem. “Yeah. It’s just this place is really... I don’t know. There’s something weird here.” She shook whatever thought it was away. “Do you know if there have been any reports of activity?”
Like, besides all the activity that goes on in a busy restaurant? “You mean ghosts? I’m not sure.”
“It’s just...” She set her jaw, and I caught her looking out at the dining room again. Specifically at a
couple sitting at the bar, and another by a table in the corner. Back and forth, then at me. Like she was comparing.
I had a lightbulb moment. Tina was looking at all the other lycanthropes, werewolves who were members of my pack who were here. She was looking at them the way she’d looked at me earlier—nervous, tense. Could she see what we were? I’d have to find a way to get her alone and ask her about it.
“I think it’s just this building,” Tina said dismissively. “It looks old. I bet it’s haunted.” She looked around at her colleagues hopefully for confirmation.
“I don’t know,” Gary said. “You know the history of this place?”
“Not a clue,” I said. I wasn’t about to blow my friends’ cover by announcing that it was popular with werewolves. “Now. Tell me what I have to do to get you guys to come on my show. Hey, I’ve got a great idea. You’ll still be in town Friday, right? How about this...”
Two birds with one stone. I’d come along on one of their haunted-house trips, broadcast my show remotely, and talk to them about paranormal investigation. At the same time, they’d interview me as part of their show—the supernatural’s take on the paranormal, if that wasn’t too confusing.
Jules looked across the table at Gary. It was a sinister look. “How ’bout we take her to Flint House?”
Gary gave a low chuckle. “Oh, that’ll be perfect.” Tina nodded in agreement. They all had eager gleams in their eyes.
“What? What’s Flint House?” I was starting to feel like the butt of a joke. “I’ve seen that look on people’s faces before a really brutal hazing.”
“Tell her,” Jules said.
Gary said, “It’s an old house, an old neighborhood. It has a long history of well-documented activity. Somebody died there—”
“I thought that was one of the prerequisites for a haunted house,” I said. “Somebody died there. Ergo, ghost.”
“This is different. This was just a few years ago, and the person who died was a paranormal investigator. Some of us think the house killed him.”
And I couldn’t complain, because I’d asked for it.
Our plans set, I saw the PI crew off and headed for home.
I’d parked a couple of blocks down from the restaurant. Night was full dark now, and the air had turned cold. I kept looking over my shoulder as I walked. It had occurred to me more than once over the last week that maybe no one was out to get me. Maybe the Band of Tiamat hadn’t sent anyone to kill me, they’d just gotten someone to burn that message on the door, and that was all. I’d done the rest myself, assuming it was a warning, an opening salvo, and that something worse would be along soon.
Nights like this, though, chill and dark, I could convince myself that I heard footsteps. Heavy steps on the concrete, claws scraping with every movement as some hulking beast stalked me. Since Vegas, I’d done a lot of reading on Tiamat and her band of demons. None of it was pretty. She was supposed to be the mother of the elder gods, one of the creators of the cosmos, a personification of salt water, who blended with Apsu, the personification of fresh water, to create life. It was all very symbolic and Freudian. Then war came, with the founding gods and the newer gods trying to destroy each other. Tiamat created a horde of serpents, dragons, and monsters to do battle for her. They were defeated. She was cut in half to form heaven and earth, and her tears formed the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
I had to ask: Was this supposed to be literal? Did this really happen at the dawn of civilization, inhuman demons lumbering across the landscape, doing battle? Or was it a metaphor, and if so, a metaphor for what? I’d spent a lot of time discovering how many of those old stories of gods, demons, witches, vampires—werewolves—and magic were true. Not all the stories were. So much of an ancient myth like this was metaphor that was repeated across stories and cultures. What metaphor was the Tiamat cult worshipping? How far would they go to get me?
I had to get my mind off this or I’d completely freeze up. I pulled out my cell phone and hit speed dial.
“What’s wrong?” Ben said, before hello, even. Just the sound of his voice made my shoulders relax a notch. He was okay, no one had gotten him.
Smiling, I said, “You always assume something’s wrong.”
He chuckled. “Because it usually is.”
“Nothing’s wrong. This time,” I said, hating the whine in my voice. “At least, I don’t think it’s anything. It’s dark. I got lonely.”
“Are you on the way home?”
“Yeah.” Finally, I reached my car. I took one last look around, up and down the street, at parked cars, hunched buildings, and weird shadows cast by old streetlamps. Anything could be hiding here. Rick’s patterns, waiting to strike. My nose wasn’t helping. All I smelled was oil, concrete, city.
“Nothing’s gone after you yet, it probably won’t start right this minute,” Ben said. He was a lawyer, always the practical one, able to rationalize just about anything.
“It’s waiting for me to let my guard down.”
“Is your guard down?”
Safe in my car, I said, “How would I know? Though if my guard was down, I suppose I’d stop thinking about it. I kind of like that idea.”
“Just hurry home. I haven’t seen you all day.” I heard the twinge in his voice. He couldn’t hide it. He was nervous, too.
“Roger,” I said and waited for him to hang up before I did.
We were a pack, and we needed to be together, so I raced home, maybe a little faster than was safe. Wolf needed her pack, after all.
Chapter 3
A couple of days before my next show, when I would tag along with the Paradox PI team, we had a full moon to get through.
I stood at the front door and called back to Ben. “Aren’t you ready yet?”
“Stop nagging, I’m coming.” He marched from the bedroom, with no revealing evidence of what had delayed him.
“I’m not nagging,” I complained. Nagged, actually. We were late. The sun was setting. We were due in the mountains soon. With my luck, we’d get stuck in traffic on the way there. Shift into wolves behind the dash of my hatchback. Wouldn’t that be exciting?
“Yes, you are.” Ben joined me and dropped a kiss on my forehead.
“You think that makes everything better?” But the warm flush in my gut said that yes, it did make things quite a bit better.
What all the stories and romances don’t say is that happily ever after doesn’t just happen. You have to work at it. You have to keep working at it.
We still argued.
“I don’t want to do this,” he said as we made our way to the car. By “this” he meant the full-moon ritual that drew our werewolf pack together, to Change, to run, to hunt. To stop being human.
“You say that every time.”
“And it’s true every time.”
“But do you have to keep saying it?”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you like it,” he said, almost cutting.
“So do you, and that’s why you insist on saying you hate it.”
“Ah, in with the pop psychology.”
“That’s me,” I said happily. He grumbled wordlessly.
We drove in a stretch of silence until we reached I-70.
“I miss the old days,” Ben said suddenly. “When it was just the two of us.”
The old days. Our pack of two. We’d Change, run, hunt together as a pair. Sleep curled together, wake human, naked, in the great outdoors. Aroused, inhibitions lowered to nothing—we’d spent some very nice mornings together, after full-moon nights.
“Maybe we can sneak off for a little while. The rest of the pack won’t miss us.” I smiled thinking of it.
Ben wore the same dreamy smile. “Hmm. Makes me almost look forward to it.”
On the drive into the mountains, I watched the rearview mirror, waiting to see someone following us. No one did, and we arrived at our destination. One of these days someone in a uniform was going to discover this wooded field at the end of a remote
dirt track filled with cars at midnight on full-moon nights. I hadn’t figured out a better way to get the pack to wilderness. Charter a bus, maybe?
My skin itched, every square millimeter, every pore. The car parked and silent, the world dark around us, I sat in the driver’s seat. Ben sat beside me. Outside, people lingered at the edges of the field, waiting for us.
“I don’t like this,” I said. This was the first full moon since we found the word Tiamat defacing New Moon’s door. “I can’t get rid of the feeling that someone’s watching us.”
Ben shook his head. “We’re a pack. Nothing can get to us if we stick together.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. “You’re supposed to tell me that nothing’s out there, that I’m being paranoid and everything’s going to be fine.”
“Everything’s going to be fine,” he said unconvincingly.
Sighing, I got out of the car.
“Hey,” Shaun called to us from the trees. Shaun was, for lack of a better word, our lieutenant, our right-hand wolf. He also managed New Moon for us. Brown-skinned, dark-eyed, he wore a T-shirt and jeans and went barefoot. He was rubbing his arms like he was nervous.
“Is everything okay?” I said. “You see anything, smell anything?”
“Seems clear.” But he shook his head and sounded uncertain.
The forest didn’t look any different. The conifers stood tall and black against a sky painted deep, deep blue by moonlight. The moon sang to my sensitive ears. It’s time. Maybe it was a matter of expectation. We were expecting something to happen, something wrong and dangerous, and so we looked through the trees and saw more danger than was really there.
Some of the pack members had left their clothing in their cars and walked out naked, like ghosts, moving with purpose. Others had already Changed; they were larger than natural wolves, waist-high, padding forward, heads low to smell for scents, tails out like rudders. Becky, Mick, Tom, Kris. The first ones to Change tended to like being wolves, or weren’t able to control themselves as well. They came to our territory, with the moon shining on them, and the wolves took over. These animals trotted to me, their backs at my hips, heads and tails low, looking away. I reached out, hands spread, and let their bodies pass under my touch. My fingers left tracks in the thick velvet of their fur. Grays, browns, tans, blacks. Their eyes glinted yellow and amber. I pressed my lips in a smile.
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