by E. E. Holmes
Milo shrugged. “Sure, why not? When you’re dead, travel expenses aren’t really a thing anymore. If you’re strong and sentient enough to find your way, why not see what all the fuss is about?”
I laughed. “I never really thought of that before, but it makes a weird kind of sense.”
“Most of what I say does, if you think about it long enough. I’m like your fairy godspirit, doling out pearls of wisdom.” said Milo, winking at me. He winked a lot; I think he picked the habit up from our friend Savvy. Some days Milo winked so often that he reminded me of an undead emoji.
“I think Karen was right,” I said. “We’re going to have to call the town and see if they will take this cardboard and everything. Or see if there’s a recycling place we can bring it to.” Karen had only just left, but not before ordering us a pizza.
My phone chose that moment to vibrate so loudly that I jumped. I glance down to see a familiar face looking back up at me from the phone’s screen. “Sorry Milo, I have to take this.”
“Whatever, I’m out of sage advice for the moment. I’m heading back to Hannah’s class. It’s finally her turn to present—they went reverse alphabetical order—and I don’t want to miss it,” he said.
Milo faded from view as I answered the call. “Don’t you have a fortune-telling scam you should be running right now?”
“No, my fortune-telling scam was yesterday,” snorted the feisty voice on the other end. I could almost hear the hair toss that accompanied her response. “Today is spooky rigged séances, but I took a break for lunch.”
I threw my head back and laughed. “What’s up, Annabelle?”
“What’s always up when I call you? Get over here. I’ve got another one, and you’re not going to believe it.”
“The list of things I wouldn’t believe is so tiny it would probably fit on a Post-it note,” I quipped. “But I need a break from all this unpacking, so I’ll be right over.”
These sorts of calls came frequently from Annabelle these days, and I looked forward to each and every one of them. Not because we were best friends or anything—although we were much closer now than I had ever imagined possible—but because we both had the same passion for our “projects.” These projects took nearly every free moment of our time; we pursued them with an excitement bordering on obsession.
Our “obsession” began when we arrived back in the States after Fairhaven, with all of us reeling from our long and arduous ordeal. We each tried to pick up the pieces and move on; we each attempted to salvage what we could from our former lives and reconcile those pieces with what was left of ourselves. For Annabelle, that meant starting all over again without her shop—which she’d “accidently” set on fire in an effort to throw the Necromancers off her trail.
But starting over without her store was nothing compared to the loss of our friend Pierce, who the Necromancers had murdered in their cross-continental search for me and Hannah. For years, Annabelle had been an integral part of Pierce’s ghost hunting team, using her own gifts to help collect evidence of paranormal activity. When my Visitations first started, it was Pierce and his team who helped me understand what was happening to me, and it was Annabelle who—in a way—introduced me to the Durupinen and got me the help I needed.
With Pierce gone, Annabelle couldn’t bear to rejoin the paranormal team. Pierce had been the team’s leader, and although the rest of the guys—minus, of course, head-Necromancer-in-disguise Neil Caddigan—had tried to carry on without him, they took fewer and fewer cases as the years passed.
One night, after the team had all but disbanded, Annabelle had called me.
§
“I need your help,” she told me in her “urgent” voice.
“Oh God, what? What is it?” I said at once, as my mind leapt into overdrive with visions of returning Necromancers.
“Some sadistic fraud has Oscar convinced that the old team is being haunted,” Annabelle replied.
“The old… you mean Pierce’s team?”
“Yeah. I haven’t seen them in a while. I just couldn’t… it was too hard.”
Annabelle’s voice was curt, almost dismissive, but I knew enough about compartmentalizing pain to know why she sounded the way she did.
“I get it. So what’s happening?” I matched my tone to Annabelle’s; I figured it would make things easier on her.
“When I told them I couldn’t come back, they started looking for another medium to join the team. They weren’t having much luck, but then a few weeks ago Oscar said he’d met a possible replacement. The woman claims not only to be a powerful medium, but says that she has a message for the whole team.”
“A message? You mean, from a spirit?”
“Yes,” Annabelle replied, in a muffled voice that told me she was clenching her teeth. “But not just from any spirit. From David.”
My heart leapt into my throat, choking me. For the tiniest moment I forgot what I knew, forgot the very thing that had torn through every last fiber of me: Pierce wasn’t just dead, but he’d Crossed over, beyond the Aether, to the realm on the other side. I knew this because Pierce’s spirit had passed right through me during his Crossing. I knew this because I’d met Pierce on the other side when I was Walking. If anyone knew that David Pierce was gone, it was me.
“That’s not possible,” I said stiffly.
“Oh, I know that, believe me,” said Annabelle. “But Oscar and Iggy and the others don’t, and we need to do something. You need to help me take this woman down—or I might just lose my shit and take her out.”
I couldn’t have been happier to oblige. We got together and did some research. Natasha Blake—real name Esther Smith—spent years trying to make it as a stage actress before reinventing herself. Her new identity was a medium who was constantly bombarded with communication requests from tormented souls.
Hers was an old enough con, but well executed. The key to her scams was that she never waited for a victim to come to her. Once “Natasha” identified her mark—usually someone who’d recently lost a loved one, preferably by sudden or violent death—she would then carefully research everything about her victim’s life before setting up a “chance” encounter. Once she had gained her victim’s trust—usually by mysteriously providing information no stranger could possibly know—she began charging exorbitant amounts of money for further spirit contact.
It wasn’t terribly hard, I’d thought, to suspect Natasha of fraud, but grieving people do desperate things—and Natasha lost no opportunity to take advantage of this. It didn’t take much digging into her past to uncover a veritable heap of victims; why no one on the team had looked into Natasha’s history thoroughly, I didn’t know. But when we were sure we had enough proof, Annabelle and I went to the team with our news.
We broke it to them as gently as possible: Pierce wasn’t reaching out from beyond the grave. That conversation was awful—utterly wrenching for all of us—but since we had qualitative evidence of Natasha’s scam, the team believed us in the end. The news was particularly hard on Oscar, who had introduced Pierce to paranormal investigation and had been a “ghost-hunting” mentor to Pierce for years.
A few nights later, Annabelle, Hannah, and I had had a satisfying chat with Natasha. We explained that she was now being watched: Unless she wanted us to haunt her forever like the spirits she pretended to see, she would go back to being Esther Smith. Then, for good measure, we brought out the big guns; we convinced Hannah to use her ability as a Caller to conjure a horde of spirits to scare the shit out of Natasha. Natasha, sobbing and begging in terror, agreed to leave New England. Last we’d checked, she was living in Florida and working as an amusement park performer.
The experience could have torn the vestiges of Pierce’s team to shreds, but instead it banded us all together. Suddenly, we had a new mission: We would work together, with all of our various talents, to unmask and destroy every paranormal con artist we could find. We were self-styled ghost-justice vigilantes—and it was awesome. And I
knew that no one would approve more of how we chose to carry on his legacy than Pierce himself.
§
Annabelle’s new shop was only a few minutes’ walk from our new apartment; it was nestled into the smallest of a long row of storefronts just a few blocks from the harbor. The sign above the door had a faded, weathered look, as though Madame Rabinski’s Mystical Oddities had been there for a hundred years, even though Annabelle had only opened her doors eighteen months ago. Annabelle had only been able to reopen her shop here in Salem thanks to a hefty insurance payout after the “accidental” fire at her first shop. Normally insurance fraud would’ve pissed me off something fierce, but I suppose if the Necromancers and Durupinen were going to destroy your life, there had to be some compensation; this kitschy, bizarre little shop was one of them.
The reason Annabelle had chosen Salem was abundantly obviously on this brisk October afternoon, when the streets were packed with the most bizarre and obnoxious crowds of tourists you could ever find anywhere. Salem was “Witch City,” the home of the notorious Salem witch trials; every year the lead-up to Halloween brought hordes of costumed people eager for a taste of the paranormal. As I shoved myself unceremoniously through the throngs, I cursed under my breath—it would be a couple more weeks until the city once again became tolerable. But I knew these tourist weeks were important to the local economy; Annabelle would most likely make the majority of her profit for the entire year from October’s earnings.
Even though Halloween was still over two weeks away, Annabelle’s shop was packed to fire-code capacity with plastic vampire fangs and bad wigs, the wearers of which were staring in fascinated horror at Annabelle’s collection of merchandise. Annabelle dealt in magic and mysticism of every variety—voodoo dolls, Santeria candles, Wiccan spell books, and antique vampire hunting kits lined her shelves; if Annabelle judged that the average suburban tourist would find an object to have the right creepy or fascinating “otherness,” she stocked it in multiple colors.
I squeezed past a group of girls dressed as the characters from Sailor Moon; they were giggling at a collection of Victorian post-mortem photographs. I found Annabelle behind the counter. She was putting a Ouija board into a brown paper shopping bag for a customer.
“And you’re sure this thing isn’t going to, I don’t know, open a demon portal in my kitchen?” asked a middle-aged Wonder Woman as she took the bag and her receipt. “I mean, I just want to do this for fun.”
“One can never tell what will happen when we tamper with the spirits,” Annabelle answered, with the shadow of a wink in my direction. “We must always exercise caution. Read the instructions carefully and all will most likely be well.”
Wonder Woman turned and barreled past me, as though she were trying to leave as quickly as she could before changing her mind. Annabelle keyed something into her register before looking up at me.
“And what brings you to Madame Rabinski’s Mystical Oddities today, my child?” she cooed.
“Oh shut up and tell me what’s happening, would you?”
“Of course! I would never withhold information pertaining to someone’s future,” she said, and then called over her shoulder, “Sarah! I need you on the register please!”
Sarah, smiling broadly, appeared so suddenly she might have teleported. “No problem, I’m on it!” she said, straightening her name tag.
I ducked under the counter and followed Annabelle into a back room stacked high with boxes.
“What’s all this?” I asked, gesturing to the nearest teetering pile.
“The trappings of All Hallows’ Eve, my dear,” she replied. She perched a pair of reading glasses on her nose as she started digging around on her desk.
“This is all for Halloween?” I asked, awed.
“Yes. Sidewalk sale. I could retire on the profits from pentagram jewelry alone. Idiots.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. If these tourists knew even half the stuff that I, as a Durupinen, knew about the spirit world, they’d run screaming in the other direction. Annabelle, too, had a Durupinen connection; her family’s Gateway had closed generations ago, but she was still spirit Sensitive. The Travelers—some of whom were in fact distantly related to Annabelle—had called her a Dormant, a term which she loathed.
“Ah-ha! There you are, you sneak!” cried Annabelle, as she pulled out a manila file folder with a dramatic flourish.
“Is this what was so urgent?” I asked, reaching my hand out for it.
“Not ‘what,’ but ‘who.’ After your Poughkeepsie project this weekend, I think we’ll want to start focusing on this guy for our next case—although I’ll have to take a back seat on this one, too, until the Halloween rush is over. His name is Jeremiah Campbell, and he’s quickly becoming the most influential paranormal personality in the country,” Annabelle said, handing me the file folder; it was crammed so full of papers that I had to grab it with both hands.
I flipped the folder open and stared down at a photo. A handsome, chiseled face with a wide, pearly grin looked back up at me. The man’s hair was dark and thick, graying at the temples in a way that, somehow, made him even more attractive. Why was it that men could get away with graying, while women were unequivocally expected to dye every strand at the first hint of gray? I found myself getting angrier about it than the moment warranted.
“Are you alright?” Annabelle asked. I looked up to see her staring at me in concern.
“Yeah,” I said, half-laughing as I snapped myself out of it. “I’m just having an internal struggle about hair care and patriarchy. Never mind me, keep talking.”
Annabelle blinked at me. “Right. Anyway, Campbell started making a name for himself about two years ago as a medium in New Orleans. It’s kind of odd. One day he was a successful real estate broker in North Carolina, and the next he quit his job, filed for divorce, and moved onto a former plantation on the edge of the Louisiana bayou.”
“Midlife crisis?” I suggested. “Did he also acquire a sports car and a much younger girlfriend with even younger boobs?”
“No, just the opposite. He gave up everything, holed himself up on the plantation, then started restoring it to its pre-Civil War glory. Of course he had plenty of money, even in spite of the nasty divorce, to get himself set up. But he severed ties with everyone—business partners, friends, and family.
“So… he sounds like a bit of a nut. But why should that bother us?”
“I’m getting to that,” Annabelle said. She picked up a paperweight—a shrunken head encased in a glass—and extracted a magazine from under it. She tossed the magazine across the desk to me. A statuesque woman stared intensely up at me; her flawlessly gorgeous face was tilted thoughtfully on a swanlike neck that emerged from a yellow ball gown.
“I assume you’ve heard of Talia Simms?” Annabelle asked.
I snorted. “Well I don’t live under a rock, so yeah, I’ve heard of her.” Everyone who’d seen a decent movie in the last five years knew who Talia Simms was. She was only twenty-seven, but she’d been nominated for three Oscars in as many years, and had won two of them. And in between blockbusters, she found the time to do indie films with strong female leading roles. On merits of her talent, brains, and beauty, Talia had become a media sensation almost overnight. But ever since her boyfriend died the previous spring in a motorcycle accident, her face had become ubiquitous. The tabloids had latched onto her ill-fated storybook romance, and simply wouldn’t let go. Talia was talented. She was gorgeous. She was…
“Living with Jeremiah Campbell?” I gasped.
“Not exactly,” said Annabelle. “That headline is a bit overdramatic. She’s not living with Campbell—they’re not a couple—but she is staying at his plantation retreat. She’s completely dropped out of public life.”
“Wow. Okay, explain.”
“Campbell claims that he has a constant companion, an angel, who allows him to communicate with the dead.”
“An angel? Is he for real?”
“He
certainly seems to think he is. And he’s gained an incredibly enthusiastic—and wealthy—following. He has at least two dozen different clients—well, devotees might be a better word—who’ve followed him to Louisiana. These people have given him extravagant amounts to communicate with the dead; he’s used that money to turn his plantation into a sort of retreat where they can commune with the spirit world.”
“And Talia Simms is one of them?”
“It would appear so. She’s been photographed coming and going from Whispering Seraph.”
“Whispering Seraph?”
“That’s what Campbell calls his property.”
Annabelle and I shared a long and enthusiastic roll of the eyes. Who the hell did this guy think he was?
“The press hasn’t really gotten wind of what Campbell really does; so far, they’ve treated his plantation like a high-end rehab, or an overpriced spiritual center.”
“Yeah, I get it. For five grand a night you’re treated to hot yoga, a steady diet of organic smoothies, new-age Buddhist-inspired chanting, and a heaping helping of plastic surgery, right?”
Annabelle laughed. “Something like that. But more likely, we think Campbell’s extorting her. Talia would probably do anything to talk to her boyfriend again.”
I shook my head before looking down at Talia’s photograph again. She was one of those celebrities who always looked a bit uncomfortable in her own skin, as if she couldn’t quite fathom why everyone kept looking at her but she was too polite to ask. She almost never smiled, at least not on the red carpet—and whatever smiling she did do disappeared completely when the tabloids started splashing Grayson Allard’s death across their covers.
Sarah clattered her way through the doorway’s curtain of wooden beads. “A gentleman would like to know if you’d consider taking a hundred dollars for the catacomb skull?”
“He can’t be serious! A hundred? This isn’t a flea market.” Annabelle paused, then adjusted her bangles and composed her face into a serene mask before sweeping out through the beaded curtain. Sarah followed her.