Martha scowled at the tray of cookies before meeting my gaze. “I don’t want Zavier destroyed, you know. I just want him to be quiet. I need to be at peace in my home.”
“I know, Mrs. Harrison. I think Zavier feels the same.”
“I do.”
Zavier wasn’t visible, but his voice was audible enough that Martha and I both gazed across the tray of treats to see a small, black object float toward us and settle on the table in front of Martha.
“My Bakelite anchor pin,” Martha said in awe. “You found it, didn’t you, Zavier?”
“It fell off your coat in the attic,” he said, again loudly enough to hear and understand.
“When I moved my winter things downstairs to air them. Of course.” She turned to me. “My husband gave me this before he shipped out with the Navy.”
Martha smiled mistily at the pin, then at the spot where Zavier had stood. “Thank you, Zavier.”
I slipped out of the kitchen, ready to go home and think. And, okay, I felt a little misty myself. I could be dead wrong, but I could swear Martha might be developing a soft spot for her spook.
I paused in the hall to let Dan and Melody tromp past me and up the staircase with their load of equipment. Then Brick beckoned to me from the dining room door.
“Come hear the EVPs,” he said, turning into the room and expecting me to follow.
I might’ve balked but color me curious.
Don and Deidre had eyes glued to the monitors. Brick indicated a free seat and handed me a set of headphones.
“I’ll play the recording from your house first.”
Da’s voice came through clearly if more softly than I thought it would. I had no trouble understanding every word, and couldn’t help but feel vindicated.
Then Brick switched recorders with the comment that he was playing the one that had picked up the majority of our encounter in the parlor.
I heard Zavier’s name without straining, and though his first knocks were faint, the pounding sure wasn’t. When our conversation began, some of Zavier’s speech was too garbled to understand, but many of his short sentences came across loud and clear. Especially his pleas to find the murdered girl.
When I removed the headphones, Brick switched the recorder off, took my elbow, and urged me outside.
“Am I getting the bum’s rush?” I asked when we stood in Martha’s front garden.
“Who is the girl the ghost wants you to find? She’s not a living person, right?”
“The ghost is Zavier, and of course he doesn’t mean a living child. Geez, Brick. Get a grip.”
“Hey, with ghosts you can never tell.” He tilted his head at me. “So how are you going to track down this ghost girl, Madame Medium?”
“Don’t call me that. I do not conduct séances, and how do you know I’ll do anything about this issue at all?”
“Because you want to help. It’s what you do.”
He had me there, but I shrugged. “In the first place, I don’t know if it’s possible to summon a spirit that’s crossed over. It’s not something I’ve done or ever wanted to do. Plus, what am I going to say without knowing her name? ‘Hey, child who haunted Searle. We need you to come back and get rid of him again.’ That’ll go over big.”
He looked away, over my shoulder. “We might be able to assist you with research. Deidre is willing to do it. See if she can get a name.”
I blinked up at him. “Why?”
“In spite of what you think, when we find real ghost presences, we want to help, too. Help the people whose lives are in upheaval from the haunting, and help the spirits themselves.”
A blast of cold spook air hit my back, and I spun to face the street to find ghosts lining the sidewalk and mouthing two words. Help us.
Great gator gunk.
I took a deep breath and exhaled a long sigh. Okay, so St. Augustine would certainly be an empty place without our non-corporeal residents, and they didn’t deserve to have their souls stolen. I also had a selfish reason to attempt this major intervention. Da might not be worried about Searle, but what if Da’s soul was as vulnerable as any other?
I looked over my shoulder where Brick watched and waited.
“All right. Tell Deidre to do the research. We’ll make a plan from there.”
o0o
“Guillelmina.”
“Say what?”
Brick walked through my office door at three in the afternoon, fifteen minutes after I’d returned from an impossible consultation with a new client and the out of control ghost that haunted the garden of his bed and breakfast. A little gentle hair pulling, acceptable. Tripping guests, so not okay. The visit left me determined to do all in my power to thwart the specter of Robert Searle so the city spooks would settle down.
As long as I kept thinking of the exercise as a large-scale intervention, I had hopes of pulling it off.
“Who is Guillelmina?” I asked from behind my desk as Brick lowered his tall, handsome self into a client chair.
“The child killed during the Searle raid.”
“Deidre is certain?”
“As much as she can be. Obviously, there’s no mention of the kid haunting the pirate. The historical society library records say he set sail on June 5, 1668 with his booty and a sizable group he’d captured that he considered not to be of pure Spanish blood.”
“Why did he leave with captives?”
“Apparently he sold them into slavery.” Brick grinned. “This dude deserves to go down.”
“All we have to do is figure out how.”
“You don’t have a plan?”
“Do you?” I countered.
He shrugged his wide shoulders. “You’re the medium. I planned to follow your lead.”
“Will you please,” I said through gritted teeth, “stop calling me a medium?”
“Why does that term bother you?”
“Aside from you yourself branding mediums as charlatans?”
“Hey, I apologized for that.”
“During the spiritualism movement of the 1800s and other eras, mediums were often exposed as fakes.”
“So you don’t like the association? Fine. We still need a plan for tonight.”
“We?” I echoed.
“The team and I want to be there. Is that a problem?”
I grimaced. “I’ll feel like an idiot working with an audience rather than alone.”
“I won’t judge you, Colleen. I learned my lesson. Now what do you have in mind for tonight?”
I drummed my fingers on my desk, but no new inspiration struck. Unless a scathingly brilliant idea smacked me upside the head in the next nine hours, I’d have to go with my seat-of-the-pants plan.
“All right, here’s my thinking. Ghosts tend to live their existence in patterns, right? They make the same noises, appear in the same rooms, open and close the same doors.”
“You’re banking on Searle’s showing up at the same time he staged the 1668 raid.” Brick nodded. “Makes as much sense as anything else.”
“Okay, so we’ll meet at the bay front about ten. The Halloween night ghost tours should be over by then.”
“Fewer people on the streets to distract us.”
“Exactly. I’ll start putting out the call for Guillelmina and hope she shows up.”
We looked at each other in silence, then Brick snorted.
“Pretty thin plan, isn’t it? No, no,” he added holding up his hand. “Don’t poker up. I don’t have a better idea unless—”
“Unless what?”
“You contact Zavier and some other spirits you know. Get their input.”
“I’ve already given the ghost-vine a shot. Not one spook has anything to suggest. They’re so upset, even their rumor mill has dried up. Tonight could be a spectacular success or a phenomenal failure.”
“Then we give your plan our best and hope it works.”
o0o
All Hallows Eve. A half moon and stars shining overhead. Temperature hovering at sev
enty-two. No wind, but thick white-gray wisps churned above the surface of the bay among the dozens of sailboats gently rocking at anchor. Water ghosts, I thought of them now. Land ghosts also still flitted through the historic downtown. Guess these spooks hadn’t found a safe place to take cover.
Brick, his team, and I arrived at the bay front within minutes of each other. The guys wore tool belts stuffed with recorders and meters. Melody wore Don’s 35mm camera on a strap around her neck, and Deidre carried the FLIR. I supposed they had more equipment at the ready in Brick’s truck parked across the street, but I doubted they’d need it.
Me? I carried three bottles of drinking water and an energy bar in my backpack, and a vial of holy water in my pocket. Da had insisted. Oh, yeah. And hope. I carried oodles of hope.
The six of us had dodged couples strolling the bay front sidewalk, watched ghost tours come and go, and generally worked to stay inconspicuous. Now the time was ten-thirty.
“The tours are winding down,” Brick observed from beside me. “In another hour, the restaurant patrons should be gone.”
“But the bars won’t close until later,” Deidre said.
I’d already thanked the young woman for her research. Now I smiled at her. “If drinkers stumble into the supernatural show, they’ll figure they’re seeing things.”
“Or sober up real fast,” Don added.
Brick grinned, then turned to me. “Ready to start contacting Guillelmina?”
“Just let me have some privacy.”
He frowned. “I wanted to get this recorded. Is that a problem?”
“If I say yes, will you drop it?”
“No.”
“You can be a real pain, Brick.”
Dan snorted and Melody coughed.
I took a digital recorder and sat on the sea wall fifty yards or so south of the Castillo de San Marcos, known locally as the fort. This is where the original docks had been built; I did remember that from history class. The spot also put a bit of distance between me and the distraction of Brick.
Bollards linked by heavy, large-linked chains ran the length of the seawall. I leaned against a bollard, and with the recorder running, I took a deep breath.
“Hello. My name is Colleen Cotton. I’m trying to reach a young girl named Guillelmina. Is she here?”
A few adult ghosts pressed closer, but no child materialized.
“Listen, I need to find Guillelmina to get rid of a pirate. Robert Searle. Word has it that he’s coming back to St. Augustine to feed on earthbound souls. The ghosts here think you scared him off before, and that you can do it again.”
Adult ghosts nodded, but didn’t add comments.
“Okay, I see other spirits here. Some of you have been banding together. There is safety in numbers, but there is strength in numbers, too.”
A few spooks tilted their heads as if they weren’t getting the hint. I laid it out for them.
“I’m saying you can band together to fight Searle. Don’t leave the job to a little kid, people.”
Now the ghosts stirred, seemed to murmur to one another.
“Hey, if you can’t scrape up the courage to drive this Searle guy away, at least help me find Guillelmina.”
“We shall.”
Faster than I could blink, Zavier popped into sight flanked by five Spanish solider ghosts.
“You shall what, Zavier? Find the child or fight?”
“Both. We shall report back shortly.” He turned to the soldiers and snapped orders in Spanish. They zoomed away in a contrail of energy, then Zavier disappeared.
‘Shortly’ is a relative term, and to a ghost it appeared to be an eternity because after an hour Zavier and the soldiers hadn’t returned.
Discouraged but not defeated, I continued calling for Guillelmina as I alternately paced the sidewalk, sat on the sea wall, and took the occasional break to save my voice. Did I feel like a moron saying pretty much the same thing over and over? Yes, but there were worse things in life—and afterlife—than dented pride.
At twelve thirty-five, I’d begun my spiel of asking for the girl again when Zavier appeared.
“Ghost woman,” he said with a bow. “She is here.”
Zavier floated to the side, and a dark haired girl wearing a long nightdress drifted to stand before me.
“Hello, Mistress Colleen.”
My knees caved and my butt landed hard on the seawall. “Guillelmina? You know me?”
A light giggle made me smile. “You said your name each time you called me.”
“You’ve been listening a while, have you?”
Her angelic little face turned grave. “I needed permission to come back.”
“Can you drive Searle away again?”
“With help.”
She turned to Zavier, held her hand up to him, and together they moved toward the sloping grounds of the Castillo with a legion of spirits following. I’m sure my jaw dropped and my eyes bugged when more spooks zipped in from the direction of the Spanish Quarter and the Huguenot Cemetery. Even the water ghosts ventured onto land.
I was so distracted by the spectacle, I squealed when Brick laid a hand on my shoulder.
“What the hell is happening by the fort?”
I blinked at him. “You can see the ghosts?”
“I see white figures. What gives?”
“Guillelmina showed. I think she’s rallying the spook troops.”
“No kidding?”
“Looks like it to me.” I glanced back at the gathering of ghosts, then caught movement from the corner of my eye.
Something rose from the waters of the bay, fifteen yards from the seawall, right in the midst of five anchored sailboats.
Masts rigged with tattered white sails bearing the red Spanish cross broke the surface first. Then, in slow motion, the dark body of the ship appeared. And so did a figure on the deck. The pirate Robert Searle.
The apparition was white like a photographic negative, but the outline of his body and his arms spread wide gave the clear impression of a large hat, a big-sleeved shirt, and a vest. He held a cutlass in one hand, a blunderbuss in the other, and seemed suspended in the past until his eye sockets turned black.
Searle pivoted toward the ghosts gathered by the fort, lifted the firearm, and took aim.
I shouted without thinking.
“Guillelmina, take cover!”
She cried something I didn’t catch and flew toward the ship with her ghost army following.
Spooks swarmed the ship from the water line to the top of the tallest mast, swirling the vessel as if it were caught in a waterspout. The main body of ghosts surrounded Searle, their numbers so many I lost sight of the pirate. Thumps and shouts, even gunfire and explosions erupted from the center of the spirit storm. For long minutes the battle ensued, the sounds so real and loud to me, that I expected the living people of the sailboats to come topside to investigate the disturbance.
Suddenly, the battle stopped and I saw why. Robert Searle’s unearthly body was lashed to a mast, his black maw of a mouth screaming curses as the ship sank back into the bay.
Huzzahs, cheers, and a rebel yell rent the night, and in the next instant the spooks dispersed. Some zoomed back through town, others settled into the water. Guillelmina, a shy but triumphant smile lighting her elfin face, wafted near me to hover over the seawall.
“It is finished. He will not return again.”
“Thank you for coming, Guillelmina.”
“Thank you for believing, Mistress Colleen.”
Guillelmina glanced toward the fort.
“Do you need help getting back?”
She shook her head. “My mother is just there.”
The ghost drifted off, and sure enough, a figure bathed in blinding white light materialized not twenty feet away. A spirit holding her arms open to embrace the child. When Guillelmina’s energy merged with her mother’s, a shaft of light shot high into the night. And then they were gone.
I stared at the sky, expe
cting to feel awe or triumph or simple satisfaction. Something besides this empty sort of sadness and bone deep exhaustion. I had to leave before I fell into a comatose heap.
“Colleen,” Brick’s voice rumbled in my ear.
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